Anything else to try before formatting?

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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I have an HP Pavilion DM1-4004sa which I've had for about 18 months now. Lately I've noticed it seems to be struggling more with day to day tasks, but mostly when browsing the web. The main culprit is it jumping/skipping when streaming videos, but even silly things like scrolling a web page, especially when images are involved is a bit of a pain.

I've done the following which normally helps get things tidied up but still no luck:
- Windows update
- Tested multiple browsers (chrome, firefox and IE - all up to date)
- Disabled browser add ons
- Virus scans (MSE, malware antibytes, spybot S+D)
- Uninstalled any useless programs
- CCleaner (cleaner, registry and removed and unnecessary startup apps)
- Windows system clean up
- Cleared up hard drive (30%+ free)
- Defrag

Normally at this point I'd give up and format it, but it's my first laptop and it doesn't seem as straightforward as a good old fashioned desktop. It doesn't have an optical drive, instead it has a recovery partition which I'm assuming will allow me to do a full reset, but not only will I have to re-install loads of software, I'd also need to clear all the bloatware that came with it.

Anything else worth trying before giving up entirely?
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys. In answer to your suggestions:

- I took the back off and it's completely clean. No dust here.

- Power settings could've been the issue. I setup a custom one to stop things going into standby when downloading and looking in the advanced settings some of the settings may have affectively been throttling to save power. I've set it back to default and will see how that goes.

- I thought about installing from the disk image, but was worried about having all the necessary drivers. With a desktop I have all the separate disks or at least know the components, whereas with a laptop it's all bundled together, so I'm not sure about things like the trackpad, wifi, general HP tools (coolsense, on screen controls etc) and even the combined cpu/gpu.

- I've never had problems with virus/malware on the laptop so doubt it's worth running them again in safemode.
 
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