Railfan Technology > Nikon Coolscan and Windows 10

Upgraded to Windows 10 about a year ago and have been running my Coolscan under VueScan with only a few minor glitches -- like sometime the handshake doesn't take the first time.  But recently my scan speed has dropped significantly.  I've exchanged a couple of emails with Ed Hamrick ( the VueScan guy) but no solution has yet arisen.

Sometimes it's just the first few scans in a session that are slow, but today I'm on my 20th scan and it is still running slow.  My guess is that Windows 10 is not giving VueScan enough resources.  In the past a reboot would often fix this, but not today.

Any ideas?

Marty Bermard

Try turning off your internet security software for a few minutes and see if that helps. 

I've used each of the 4 'major players' products through the years and they tend to get more 'hoggish' for system resources as time goes by. 

It could also be Windows 10 performing updates 'in the background (ha!)' that is disk activity intensive as well.  Between Windows updates and security software deciding to 'deep scan' every file on my system and slowing everything down, even internet browsing, I finally turned off all automatic functions for scanning and updating.  The key is to remember to do Windows updates as well as security software updates on a regular basis...perhaps weekly.  I 'allow' the virus scan (manually start it) when I'm essentially done for the day on the computer and watch tv for a while.

Turning off the 'automatic' services is not for the forgetful or faint of heart.  Keeping them turned off can and will cause your computer to catch a virus or two.   Of note is that from what I've read, Windows 10 Home Edition does not generally allow the users to 'turn off' it's update cycle.  I'd suggest what Windows Services to disable instead but that could cause even bigger problems down the line.

Another possibility is that you are running out of RAM.  Most scanning software programs will 'hold' the scans in RAM until you write them to your hard drive or SSD.  All video and photo editors do the same.  The problem is when it runs out of physical RAM it starts 'paging' the RAM to your hard drive, swapping all or parts of pictures out to a work-area on your hard drive and swapping them back in when needed.  This really slows things down.  Remember too that all the programs that come in at startup and 'stay resident' will take up that RAM, too.  Do you really need your instant messanger active while you're busy doing slides?  Turn it off.  It'll come back automatically the next time you reboot.  And speaking of rebooting, at least once per day is strongly recommended.  My friends' two teenage girls simply close their laptop when they're done with it.  I found them to be 3-4 MONTHS behind in Windows and internet security updates!  SLEEP is not the same as power off or reboot. 

Another possibility is you've added more software to your computer - both intentionally and unintentionally.  All too often, when downloading and installing a shareware product to test and ultimately pay for and keep, unless you're VERY cautions about clicking the 'agree' button, you will very likely get a whole slew of useless junk, including toolbars for your browser, advertisements, changes to your homepage and even replacing your browser with one you may not like.  I'm not completely familiar with Windows 10, but the methodology to get rid of the garbage is common to all Windows systems.  On the Control Panel screen, select 'programs and features'.  Then very cautiously uninstall (remove) programs that you recognize as useless trash.  Of special note - just because you don't recognize something doesn't mean it's useless.  It could well be a 'piece' of one of your 'good' products and programs.  

BR, thanks for such a comprehensive list.  Looks like I'll be checking things out for awhile.

Marty

OK.  When I booted thsi morning and tried a scan, the scan was still extreemly slow.  I rebooted and niow the scans are back to their normal speed.  I did nothing to the machine.  I'm at a loss as to the problem.

Marty Bernard

MartyBernard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> OK.  When I booted thsi morning and tried a scan,
> the scan was still extreemly slow.  I rebooted
> and niow the scans are back to their normal
> speed.  I did nothing to the machine.  I'm at a
> loss as to the problem.
>
> Marty Bernard

That sounds strongly like your internet security software will do a scan shortly after boot up each morning.  Assuming your reboot was several hours later, the scan for the day was complete, so it didn't need to do it again. 

One last possibility is that the hard drive (or SSD) in your computer is starting to go.  What happens is that the system will retry and retry and retry to get a 'good' read or write operation.  When my laptop started taking 10 minutes to do a shutdown, it turned out to be the SSD.  There were no warning messages, no nothing.  I even went to DOS mode (as administrator) and did a CHKDSK /f operation and it didn't find anything wrong.  I replaced it and now it shuts down quickly.  Perhaps going into your scanning software and changing the location (if you have multiple drives) or size of its work (scratch) area(s) would effectively relocate it to a different area of your drives thus avoiding the bad(?) spot. 

Try disconnecting your Ethernet cable from your puter and see if that helps your scanning.  Dan

I decided to try my old scanner to see if it really was a Windows 10 problem (I used Windiws 8 when I ran the old scaner).  First I replaced the new cord between the Coolscan and my laptop with the old cord to see what would happen.  Unbelievably it fixed the problem.  (-:

Marty