32 bit apps slow under Windows 8 64 bit

Hi all, I've been having some trouble lately with certain applications that I now realize are all 32-bit applications. When launching the applications (iTunes, windows media player and games) it can takes from 2 to 4 minutes to load and depending on what I do in then application (i.e. in iTunes, I can click on preferences or the option to burn playlist to CD) the application hangs again and comes back after 2 to 4 minutes. With media player - if I leave it up and click on another AVI then it works as expected but if I close media player and then open another AVI/Mpeg then the app will hang for 2 to 4 minutes.

Any of the windows applications come up fine and office applications (Office 2013 64 bit) so I have narrowed it down to 32 bit apps. The task manager will list the application as not responding but it does come up eventually.

I had everyone working fine before and I did do a complete reinstall (installed Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit) and then immediately did the Windows 8 upgrade (with Media center). It was fine for a few weeks and then the issue started to happen which I noticed with Media Player and then iTunes.

So there was no change with safe mode and I did do a SFC /scannow which came out fine.

I have a home grown PC:
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (I know, its almost 3 yrs old), Core i7 3.0 Ghz cpu, Samsung SSD 840 Pro as the OS drive, Gigabyte GX 560 video card, Ceton Xfinity tuner card, an Avermedia OTA tuner card and multiple hard drives.

I'm running Windows 8 Pro with media center.

I've always been a follower of the Windows 7 forums and now the Windows 8 forums and seemed to manage to find my own issue and resolutions but I'm stuck on this one so I figured I would post and see if you fine folks can help me out

Thanks

Hello and welcome to the Window 8, and to the Eight Forums!

First problem I saw, your install of Windows 8 was an upgrade over Windows 7. This is an issue within itself, let alone the fact itunes is involved (not a big fan of itunes at all especially the poor metro/Zune ripoff that is itunes 11). Doing upgrade installs, regardless if you just installed the previous and immediately upgraded to a newer version, will have problems crop up sooner or later. Usually it's a tad later down the road where weird things happen for no reason.

If at all possible, before doing anything radical, can you try to do an isolated install of Windows 8 in a virtual machine, a separate PC, or even just making a partition on your hard drive and doing a clean install onto that; then install itunes as well as other troublesome programs to see if the problem surfaces? The last method I suggest doing as that will use your hardware straight up.

Have you looked under performance and information tools. Look at the Advanced tools option. Something there may give you some idea what is causing the slow down

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. I did look in the performance and information - advance tools options and the only alert was performance can be improved by changing visual settings. Didn't see too much there.

As far as doing a clean install, that may be tougher to do as this is the PC that I run my media center off of to watch cable for the entire house (via Xboxes). I have made a system image so this may be something I can entertain in future.

This was a clean install. Windows 7 was loaded first but I chose the option to do a clean install of Windows 8. It is the upgrade version of Windows 8 but you need to have Windows 7 loaded first and either install over it or it gives you the option to do a full clean install.

I had Windows 8 running since November but when I switched to an SSD in February I did the reinstall. Everything was running fine until about a month ago and its only the 32 bit applications, very strange, something must have gotten messed up with an update or something.

I'm gonna have to agree with the upgrade with Windows 8 over Windows 7. I too did the same.....my PC had all kinds of strange issues happening......mouse not working then the next reboot the keyboard stopped working. Uninstalled Windows 8.....everything fine again. I did as suggested above and made a partition on my hard drive and did a clean install onto that with Windows 8. So far no problems! :thumb: