[Closed] Help with Laptop - its so slow!!!

standard answer will be replace the HDD with an SSD. Have you monitored task manage/resource manager when doing things that take a long time to see if anything looks to be a bottleneck? If an AV scanner is running I'd temporarily disable that and see if it helps.

Also make sure it's not running in a power conservation mode (I assume it's slow when mains-powered not just on battery)? If you have an app to check temps it might be worth looking at that incase it's got an overheating issue (possibly full of fluff/dust) and is throttling itself. Not sure what the current recommendations are for temp monitoring app though, might depend on your laptop's motherboard model

Overheating from an accumulation of fluff internally?

Download an app that keeps check of temperature to check.

I'm going through the same issue with an old MacBook Air - I can hear the fan rev up and then it starts to go really slow and hang up. Turns out the CPU is hot.

I'm going to split it today and check it out.

I'm also going to check if the CPU has a need for thermal paste.

standard answer will be replace the HDD with an SSD

Is this value for money in terms of cost versus replacing it?

It is a HP so it comes with loads of HP software. I think I have disabled it all but I am aware it is still hanging around.

Cooling seems OK.

is your HDD almost full?

Is your cooling system clean?

even SSD's when near full can cause slowdowns on start up and opening programs.

what programs are running in the background?

Been through this recently with a 13yr old Acer laptop, cost about £85 for a Kingston ssd and went through steps to ensure win10 was working at its optimum, far better than binning and buying new for me but to be honest it doesn't get used a great deal.

HDD is 1/3 full.

Will attack it with a hoover later to get rid of any dust etc.

Just looked at SSD aren't as expensive as I thought (£50 for Western Digital). Would depend how easy it was to install and transfer over

I had a 2009 HP presario that originally came with Vista and was still running fine until the HHD went a few weeks ago.
basically I disabled stuff on start up in configsys (which you've already done)
didn't have 3rd party AV software, just windows defender
ran malwarebytes once every so often
ran ccleaner occasionally (I think Cougar recommends something else now)
And I did a dismantle to clean the fan at least twice in it's life (wasn't aware that might have helped, until now).
Also I think it was set to do a regular defrag, but I occasionally did manual ones.
also made sure I got rid of programmes that weren't used, so it was always fairly light on programmes. (which doesn't seem to be an issue for you if 1/3 full)

Don't know if any of that is of use, but my old HP laptop always remained useable until it properly died (and it was a fairly basic spec one in 2009).

EDIT the only occasions i noticed it was old and struggling was if I tried to open too many word/excel documents, but generally I wasn't a heavy user anyhow.

Don't use a vacuum cleaner, you need to carefully disassemble it and gently blow out any dust in the fan or vents. A vacuum cleaner won't get anywhere closed to actually get the dust out and might damage the fan.

Oh yeah, as Flaperon says above^. I tried the vac thru the fan ducts and it just dislodged the collected fur ball into the blades of the fan. luckily I turned it off immediately with no damage and then dismantled the laptop to clear the dislodged dust ball. Basically it all collects in the fins of the heat sink or somewhere and becomes one mass fur ball.
Unfortunately, if yours is similar to mine, getting to the fan is a fairly major operation, but I'm a numpty and managed it twice with the help of youtube.

Also had this with a Vista laptop. New SSD and clean install of windows from the media creation tool seems to have returned it to former speeds instead of annoying slow to the point of useless. Can't hurt to clean it out either.

When was the last time you formatted the HD and re-installed Windows? That always sorted things for me. SSD will make laptop snappier too. If you go down this route then do a fresh Windows install rather than any kind of cloning.

Anyone got an easy how to guide for installing a SSD and installing Win 10 onto it?

Am I right in thinking that Win 10 is free now so you don't have to pay for it anymore?

Yes I did it for free only a few months ago off a link on here when they stopped support for W7. it was an official MS webpage.

robbo1234biking
Subscriber
Anyone got an easy how to guide for installing a SSD and installing Win 10 onto it?

Am I right in thinking that Win 10 is free now so you don’t have to pay for it anymore?

If it's already running win10, you can just create an win10 installer thingy on a USB drive.

There's a tool you download that does it all for you:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

There's also loads of guides online how to do this but essentially you stick the new drive in, then plug the USB drive in with the win10 install & it will guide you through it. You might need to change the BIOS settings so it looks for the USB drive on boot, but I am not 100% sure on that. It might just run through all options until it finds the drive.

I did this a year or so ago (perhaps a bit longer) and couldn't believe how easy it was & how much faster the laptop is.

But, it sounds like there are other things going on, to be honest.
My laptop is at least 8 years old now and before the change with the original HDD it was taking perhaps 2 mins (3 at the most) to boot from cold. That is an i5 processor with 6Gb RAM. It would run Zwift (low graphics setting as it's only got old onboard graphics), Fusion360 (3D CAD) & Photoshop CS2 without bother as well as Open Office programs.

Before getting the SSD, I would back-up everything from the HDD you need & do a clean install on that of win10 as well as doing the suggestions above such as cleaning any dust out.

DO you have loads of stuff stored on the desktop? Temp folders of photos etc. that never get moved etc? A few years ago my computer was running insanely slow & it turned out it was because there was a folder on the desktop with >1gb of pics in it that I had put there temporarily & forgotten to remove. For some reason (I can't remember the details now) it was causing Windows to slow to a crawl - something to do with storing large files on the desktop.

Download HWinfo and see how hot things are getting.
If your CPU is cooking that will give you a good place to start.

If not, I always use a combination of R-kill, Adaware and CCcleaner to at least get a grip on what is happening.

If they find any specific nasty then google how to get rid of it.

Or you could go for a fresh windows install on either the existing HD or a new one.

SSDs are relatively cheap now and make a huge difference.

Good shout stumpy I think most of back up photos are stored on the desktop so I will have a look at transferring them all to the hard disk direct and see if that helps.

I am pretty tempted to try a fresh install though on a SSD for the cost. I didn't realise they were so cheap. Will need to dig out a old USB hard disk to do that

What does Task Manager show when it takes 10 minutes to open a Word Doc?
Windows does some indexing but it's never been that bad on any of my PC's, and you can turn it off if it is a problem. But as above, something isn't right, throwing a SSD at it may make it better but not fix it.

I found with my slightly older laptop the only way to use it was to leave it on all the time. Windows 10 is always doing 'something' and an older machine takes AGES for it go through and check all the files are backed up etc.

It took far too long from start up to be ready to use otherwise.

Other stuff to consider, if you don't do a fresh Windows install...
Defrag of all partitions
A few free anti-spyware app scans (I use SuperAntiSpyware)
Depending upon Windows version (pre- 10), fix the size of the virtual memory and create it after a defrag, so it ends up as a single block

It doesn't take long to get out of the loops with pc stuff, from ~2005 I was quite happy putting together new builds and "speeding up" messy Windows installs, but I've done nothing on either front since 2014 and wouldn't relish tackling them these days.

There's some good advice here so there's not much I can add. SSD + clean Windows install will likely make a huge difference and taking a can of compressed air to it whilst you've got it in bits can't hurt. Samsung EVO is my SSD of choice. If you have an M.2 slot in your machine this could be faster still.

You talk of "transferring things over" which rings alarm bells. Do we need to have a conversation about backups?

You're already running W10 so you don't need to worry about things like licence keys, it Just Knows that you're licensed. If you aren't already, consider logging in to Windows with a Microsoft account as it'll tie the "digital licence" to your account (if it sees the Internet during setup it'll pretty much try and force you to do this). This will be invaluable should your motherboard ever explode.

ran ccleaner occasionally (I think Cougar recommends something else now)

I don't think I've ever recommended ccleaner, not for a long time anyway. I've used TFC more recently for clearing temp files etc but honestly storage is so cheap and plentiful these days that I'd file it under "why bother?" We're not running Windows 95 with 4MB of RAM anymore, times have changed.

Windows 10 is always doing ‘something’ and an older machine takes AGES for it go through and check all the files are backed up etc.

This isn't quite right. Windows will use spare resources for maintenance and optimisation because, well, they're spare. If those resources are needed elsewhere then it'll release them. Starting up of course comes with an overhead, sounds like an SSD would've helped here too.

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows hasn't changed notably in like a decade.

The recommended RAM for Windows 98 was 16MB.
The recommended RAM for Windows XP four years later was 128MB (eight times greater than W98's).
The recommended RAM for Windows Vista four years later was 2GB (a 16-fold increase!).

The recommended RAM for Windows 10 fourteen years later is just 4GB and that's a very recent change. I appreciate that I'm a geek but I find that absolutely astonishing.

Other stuff to consider, if you don’t do a fresh Windows install…

Do a fresh install.

Defrag of all partitions

Do NOT do this on an SSD.

A few free anti-spyware app scans (I use SuperAntiSpyware)

Little point unless you suspect an infection.

MalwareBytes is my go-to, Super is decent but a bit chatty (last time I used it anyway).

Depending upon Windows version (pre- 10), fix the size of the virtual memory and create it after a defrag, so it ends up as a single block

Pre-Vista perhaps. Windows knows more about memory management than you or I do, leave it alone.

Right have downloaded HWInfo and temps are running at about 50 deg C so dont think it is overheating.

I have tried the CC Cleaner and RKill and no issues detected. It deleted some cookies and got rid of some files from the waste bin.

I had 105GB (!!!) of files on the desktop so I have moved them across.

Currently the only things that I have open are HWingo, Resource Monitor and this webpage in Google Chrome and CPU usage is at 40%. That seems high to me but I dont know what it should be...

TBH, Chrome is a bit of a beast these days.

robbo1234biking

I had 105GB (!!!) of files on the desktop so I have moved them across.

Yowzer! I'd be interested to hear if that makes a difference. It made a big difference with mine & that was only ~1Gb stuck on the desktop.

I’d be interested to hear if that makes a difference. It made a big difference with mine

It won't, and I highly doubt it did unless your disk was critically low on space and you've moved them to a different drive (or you've got roaming profiles enabled or something equally odd I suppose).

The notion that lots of files = slow computers is a myth perpetuated by companies selling "disk cleaner" products. See also: registry cleaners, your registry is not dirty, leave it alone.

I swear, there'd be a lot fewer poorly PCs if people didn't follow advice on the Internet that was last relevant on NT4.

... because, really, this is the beef I have with ccleaner. It was a really, really good, useful product - about 15 years ago. I see no reason for it to still exist in 2020, and the pack of outright lies on their web page does not help endear it to me. Here's a choice one:

"Is your computer running slow? As it gets older it collects unused files and settings which take up hard drive space making it slower and slower. CCleaner cleans up these files and makes it faster instantly."

Bull, and indeed, shit it does. You'll be telling us next that 1s are heavier than 0s.

(... and if you're going to argue about the mass of electrons then you can get in the sea, you know what I mean.)

Right going for a fresh install now I have got a spare USB flash drive and a spare hard disk to back up the data. If that doesnt work then I will go for a new SSD.

Do I need to install anything virus wise etc once I have reinstalled win 10 or is win10 good enough now?

I've had no issues with the built in AV that comes with Windows.

I've been using Windows Defender or whatever it's called for years & years with no issue - but, I don't click on "your computer is slowing down", "click here to win a house" etc. type banners and delete any e-mails that look remotely dodgy.

If you do the same, you'll probably be OK.

windows defender and run malwarebytes free version once every so often

If you want it to run slow again load up the third party anti virus software, if you're sensible and keep updates switched on, no.

Right reinstall doesn’t seem to have made a massive difference so I have ordered a new ssd to install tomorrow. Will see how that goes. If that doesn’t solve the problem it will be new laptop time I guess. Hard drive sounds like it is struggling when you start the computer so it could be close to failing.

How's the battery, I had a w10 install on a laptop which ran slowly, the battery didn't hold enough charge to boot into windows and needed to be plugged in all of the time. New battery installed everything went back to normal.

You did a complete new install, not just reinstalled keeping apps etc.?

Don't think the battery will make any difference, the battery on the laptop I did was totally dead, needs to be permanently plugged in.

An SSD will speed up boot up but not necessarily make a huge difference during normal use.

Complete resintall. I have been monitoring the disk usage and it is at 95 to 100% all the time even when nothing is running or being used. In comparison on my work laptop it is at 0% to 5% even when accessing so I think something is wrong with the hard disk. We will find out when I install the new hard disk!

95 to 100% all the time even when nothing is running or being used.

Something is clearly running, but you'll need to go into task manager, then click the top of the disk column to put the processes in order of how much they are using, that's usually enough to give you a really good clue as to what the culprit is.

If it's a fresh install, it may be windows update or disk indexing, reading and writing to the disk, especially with an HDD rather than an SSD. It doesn't take too much to saturate the throughput of an HDD, which will pin it at max until whatever job is running finishes.
If that's the case, leaving the machine on for a good few hours whilst it chuggs through may help, but id certainly check in task manager.

This isn’t going well. Got the new SSD installed physically no problem. Thought I could just use my sub boot stick but it is going to a blue screen with some black lines on it. I can sometimes get it to a screen where it says there is an issue with the digital signature. I do t really want to clone the old drive and would rather do a fresh install. Any ideas?

Have you told it look for the USB stick in the bios??
When I did mine, I seem to remember having to change the 'device order' (don't know the correct name) to look for a USB device. Once it was installed, I switched it back.

This might help you find the key to whack to get to the bios:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tomshardware.com/amp/reviews/bios-keys-to-access-your-firmware,5732.html

Solved it. Memory module that I had to remove to install the ssd wasn’t clipped in properly!

I was going to say "RAM" for your hard disk thrashing issue but didn't bother posting when I saw you'd got 12GB.