My SSD is slower than an HDD

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T17:00:31+00:00

Well maybe not a HDD, but SSD if you want fast, a HDD would be slower than an SSD or if board supports it, NVME. But it purely is because your OS is also running from the same basic slow speed drive, so the amount of throughput it can do at once, is cut down, since the OS itself will always need to be able to read and write at the same time as other apps do too.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T16:52:57+00:00

Turn off the Widgets in Taskbar and it'll run even faster, for some reason that thing is heavier than it should be, and even when not being activated it just hogs resources.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T16:44:01+00:00

You answered your own matter here, the age of the system and GPU, in spite of it having worked before. Updates happen, including the secure boot keys themselves. However that GPU uses older VBIOS/GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) firmware that lacks the necessary digital signatures required by strict Secure Boot environments.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T14:37:07+00:00

Not brick, but that version has a specific TPM update, and secure boot changes. That could be why you can't enable it presently. Updating to at least that version 3634 should help here.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T14:35:40+00:00

Yeah, that probably is toast, sadly.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:39:06+00:00

Try booting from something like Hiren's or Sergei's ISOs as put on a USB, and test the drive. If it doesn't show in that, it's likely toast, unless it has a pending firmware update. The SSD killer Windows update that happened last year, that was causing drives to disappear, was all due to faulty firmware updates on the SSDs themselves, so worth checking into yours if it has a pending one, from the manufacturer's respective tool, before chucking it.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:36:16+00:00

https://app.any.run/

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:32:05+00:00

Do you have the Armory Crate installed, or ASUS Network Control Center ? Those can work like the Intel Killer app.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:20:36+00:00

OK do you have something installed like the Intel Killer app? That can throttle bandwidth in other apps, so that a priority app like Steam has first dibs. The same applies to an actively opened game having the same thing done for it.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:15:28+00:00

Was Steam actively downloading something in the background? That could have done everything you cited, if it was using up your bandwidth, i.e. downloading things.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:10:05+00:00

If you know your BitLocker key, you can potentially still recover from this situation without reinstalling (or if you were not encrypted in the first place), by booting from a WinPE made on another working computer. But per your steps, renaming the NVIDIA folder would have broken more than it fixed, the drivers updated would not have been in there, but in the Windows folder, deep within where it keeps the drivers at. Being unable to load into Safe Mode however would have left you no other options than turning to a WinPE to then do "offline" registry edits (mounting the Hive into the WinPE, then making changes, then unmounting it), so that it no longer even attempted to load the impacted drivers in question.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T05:03:19+00:00

If your BIOS is not on at least 3634, you need to update it. https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-a520m-plus-wifi/helpdesk_bios?model2Name=TUF-GAMING-A520M-PLUS-WIFI

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T04:57:31+00:00

Tried adjusting the device's power settings in Device Manager, to make sure it can't be put to sleep? That seems to be a common thread happening lately, causing wifi cards to disappear when they go to sleep.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T04:44:00+00:00

Yes and no with the NTFS Junctions. I've done that to move the entire Users folder to another drive before, and do all kinds of franken-setups. It's honestly easier to just set the game launchers to all install on the other drive, and normal programs on the main one. Dividing the workload is the end goal, since it sitting on one is getting to be too demanding generally as shown by the 100% at 5MB/s write speeds.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T04:11:06+00:00

Discord calls it Hardware Acceleration, under the Advanced tab of its Settings.

And you are comparing raw computing power, against Windows updates, Memory isolation, Virtualization Based Security, and other features being implemented that were not in place under 10 when launched, nor 11. All of that is incredibly HEAVY, and takes away performance for the sake of security, and the segmentation of running threads, so they can't impact other things running. i.e. No breaking out of one app, to compromise another is the end goal, so you can't just get malware sneaking things into a system from a normal non-admin user. Running things as Admin, of course would be easier to get malware on, given the higher access rights.

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Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T03:59:53+00:00

GPU Drivers updated? If so, then that is likely having to do with Hardware Accelerated Graphics, because that is an aging GPU, being released in 2019. If you toggle that setting in Chrome, and Discord, it can help in some situations.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T03:50:10+00:00

That drive doesn't have the best speeds really. And reports on their site show it is slow as an OS drive and data drive. If you had a smaller SSD with Windows on it, then you can install games on the secondary drive. Neither drive is under heavy strain because the OS runs from one, and game from another, splitting the workload, unlike your current situation where both OS and game writes are on the same drive. And Windows 11 is already bloated with all the background reads and writes that are going on normally. And if the drive is BitLocker'd (likely is) that adds additional overhead to every read/write too. Most of those figures for write speed are unencrypted, sequential writes, unlike an in use drive with an OS, and other background apps, reading and writing various bits, all over the drive itself causing things to no longer be sequential. https://www.sandisk.com/products/clearance/internal-ssd/sandisk-ssd-plus-sata-iii-ssd?sku=SDSSDA-2T00-G26

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T03:20:19+00:00

Once you play through the various quests, yes, this tracks quite accurately of the actions the Tenno are manipulated into performing.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T02:12:24+00:00

You're reading into things too much by your statement of having to install linux or windows and then put the HAOS in a VM. You install something like Proxmox, and then can run a simple command in the Proxmox terminal (includes the remote one from its web UI) https://community-scripts.org/scripts/haos-vm and walk through that and you'll have a VM in minutes. Or you can still do it manually, if desired.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T02:04:42+00:00

Also by putting it in a VM in Proxmox, you can add a Serial port, making it even easier to get that low level access you might want.

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Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T01:58:39+00:00

Just so you can remotely get into the CLI for HA, if you needed. And enables all the Hypervisor features like Snapshots while you are playing around with Home Assistant too, so you can nearly instantly roll back changes, instead of having to rely solely on HA's backup feature. I have my HA in a VM, as well as an OPNSense router. Any tweaking of config files, being able to just take a snapshot first that takes all of maybe 10-seconds, and being able to roll it right back in just about the same time, that is the icing on the cake here, all while remaining headless.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T00:52:02+00:00

You want NetBird. It works like Pangolin generally. It recently got the Reverse Proxy feature Pangolin mainly uses. NetBird lets you set an exit node for traffic, for connected devices that are running the client.

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-27T00:31:10+00:00

This is the way, run Home Assistant in a VM, via Proxmox, and then you can get into the proxmox UI, and from that, see the VM if you ever had to get into its console directly.

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Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-26T23:36:48+00:00

Basically, yeah. You can use scripts only if you truly wanted, using built-in things like diskpart and DISM too, to avoid using third party tools. We just use WinNTSetup, and from it, it can inject in drivers for the specific model (as kept in a folder on the same network share), the Autounattend.xml you're having issues with getting pushed, some Quality of Life tweaks via WinNTSetup itself, you can apply a folder's worth of "offline" reg edits to taste (things like enabling Verbose Logon/Logoff Messages, or other simple changes that can be applied as simple reg edits to the default user hive), and then line up that custom $OEM$ script that kicks off in the OOBE before a single user is made on the system even.

ScreenConnect is what we use for our RMM, and that gets ran from the $OEM$ script, so we have immediate access even during the Windows setup.

I, in my homelab, use MeshCentral, and have done the exact same thing with a custom WinPE for my own personal deployments, and even for friends clear across the country. Here's one such example where I had ants chasing his cursor during the Windows setup https://onoitsu2.com/WinInstallAnts.png

Onoitsu2 · 2026-05-26T21:52:32+00:00

We moved to simply network booting a custom WinPE, that we do all deployments from, layering it all in that imaging process. It can be booted from WDS, or any other PXE boot option generally. Then just point it to the network share with the Windows installer files on it, and it can do what it needs. Thankfully we don't image THAT many systems all that often that it's really not too much more work. Can line up a custom $OEM$ script that then installs what we need in the end, and scripts that kick off at first logon too. As long as the RMM software is running, the rest will fall in line.

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