Windows 7 GUI slowness

What Hacker News said

Recommends kasabali · 2023-07 · on “Kill DWM (on Windows11) for less input lag and better performance”

Here's a more honest and direct introduction than Microsoft itself could wrote: [LINK] Especially follow the YouTube links demonstrating the problem: [this video] [LINK]

Cites createaccount0 · 2013-10 · on “Windows 8.1 now available”

I tried it on a new computer (Haswell desktop with SSD). But Windows 8.1 is still slower than XP. Even though I disabled all animations I can feel some lag between clicks and response. Probably it's because of this: [this video] ("Windows 7 GUI slowness") I'm going back to XP, but I needed to buy a dedicated graphics card because Intel HD doesn't have drivers for XP. And there's also 3GB RAM limit.

Cites StillBored · 2017-07 · on “24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse”

Actually, its not as accelerated as it was back in the winXP days. Here is a random link about it: [this video] . Basically, the GPU card vendors could hook any part of the win32 GDI pre windows vista, and they did. Post vista, only a tiny portion of the GDI is accelerated. In theory you can avoid this by writing your application using a more modern API, but the vast majority of native windows applications continue to basically be GDI based due to age, or various GUI toolkits still being GDI based. Worse there are a number of toolkits (or browsers) which implement their own drawing routines rather than calling the system supplied ones. The final composited results with aero are of course accelera

Cites StillBored · 2020-07 · on “MaXX Interactive Desktop: A Re-Implementation of the IRIX Interactive Desktop”

While you might be slightly right, my experience tuning windows machines leads me to believe your missing the mark. I'm going to say the three largest contributions to general desktop lag are: Animations and intentional delays. It can't be said, how much faster a machine feels when something like MenuShowDelay is decreased to 0, or the piles of animations are sped up. Too many layers between the application draw commands and the actual display. All this compositing, vsync, and minimal 2d acceleration creates a low level persistent lag. Disabling aero on a win7 machine does wonders to its responsiveness. But even then pre-vista much of the win32 GDI/drawing API was basically implemented in ha

Cites ndiddy · 2025-10 · on “Windows 10 refuses to go gentle into that good night”

I remember when 7 came out and people complained about how the UI was less responsive than XP! Example: [this video] I guess Windows UI responsiveness has just been steadily declining since the early 2000s.

Critical testz3453 · 2011-10 · on “Ten years of Windows XP: how longevity became a curse”

I will use Windows XP for another 5 years - until new software and hardware will stop working on XP. Windows 7 GUI is 5 times slower than XP and has bugs: [this video] (Windows 7 GUI slowness) [LINK] (Windows 7 GUI slowness: file explorer) Windows 7 uses 5 times as much resources: XP: 233MHz, 64MB RAM, 1.5 GB. 7: 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 16 GB.