Ridiculously poor performance from what should be, a half decent Laptop?

FatRakoon · 2 Jun 2022 at 21:11

Some time ago, I had a very similar issue with a Fuji Laptop, where the specs say I should get HEY COOL but instead I got PAH!

I got pretty much the same with this laptop, and now I understand why I bought it for such a cheap price. Its bordering on useless.

The Laptop itself, if a HP Gaming Pavilion i7-cd052na
its an i7-9750H @ 2.6, 8GB RAM and has a 250GB SSD and a 1TB HD
Its got both Intel and nVidia GTX1650 Graphics, so thats cool, but it is by far, the most awful laptop that I had had in years.

For example...

( Oh, and its got a full fresh install of Windows 10, the latest version I downloaded from the MS Site and it has the latest drivers all in )

I power it on, it boots up in just a few seconds thanks to the 250GB Samsung M2 SDD and the 1TB Seagate Hybrid.

So, I open up Thunderbird to check emails, and Thunderbird seems to hang. I cannot click on anything when it shows up, but I wait a moment.
I then double click on the MY Computer Icon and the blank window pops up and after a few seconds, it fills with the info.. Not loooking good, and TBird is still not responding.
I Right click on MY COMPUTER icon to select properties and that also takes some time to open up. TBird is now responding. I close it cos Im bored of waiting over 20 seconds for that to do anything.
I select DEVICE MANAGER a few times before it responds to me. I then get that open finally.
Its been over a minute and teh steam icon appears on the task bar... Its set up to load up with Windows, but, might I add, this does NOT make the slightest bit of difference to anything.
I open up steam by right clicking the icon in the taskbar and after 5 or 6 seconds the box appears and I move to highlight LIBRARY but I still have to wait a few seconds for that to highlight.
Now, I could go on, but this is how it responds EVERY TIME TO EVERYTHING.

I have tried different RAM ( it only takes a single stick ) and I have tried various different installs and drivers and I have tried different HDs and SSDs but nothing makes any difference.

Is this one of those machines that are simply cheaply thrown together and are simply a load of old cobblers, or is there something that I am doing wrong??

Snapshot · 4 Jun 2022 at 11:45

It's worth downloading the maintenance manual from HP as it's a bit odd that a laptop of that spec only takes one DIMM. The two 'normal' Pavilions my wife has had both took two and the second one is a very decent machine.
It would also be worth having Task Manager's Performance tab open before loading any applications so you can see what is hogging the system. Repeat with the Processes tab open.

FatRakoon · 4 Jun 2022 at 12:49

You will have to excuse my idiocy.

Yes, every laptop I do have, has two, thats the norm I assume, although I have seen single slot Laptops.

Anyway, I opened it up this morning, ( or maybe last night - I have not had much sleep ) and I had a play, and like a complete moron, I noticed that it DOES have two slots... One was covered by a plastic sheet ( Yup, I am a moron ), why I didnt think to look under it, is beyond me. LOL

And so I have currently got 2 sticks of 8GB in there, not the same stuff, but, they seem to be working fine.

As for Task Manager, This also keeps hanging and pausing as an app, so this was not that much help to be honest.

Snapshot · 5 Jun 2022 at 09:17

I really can't see why you're not getting the very good laptop the spec says you should. As a desperate suggestion, have you tried resetting the BIOS to factory default?

Minstadave · 5 Jun 2022 at 09:24

Have you checked resource manager to see if the CPU/RAM or drives are being maxed out?

FatRakoon · 5 Jun 2022 at 11:43

Its definitely better with the 16GB but even at 8GB it should be just fine.
And yes, I have seen the RSC MGR to see what is eating it... There was something that I need to check out ( Its in the bag right now ) as some app did show its ugly mug that I have not seen before, and that was eating up a fair chunk of its RAM and CPU.
But its not just that.. its the pausing of random apps at times when it should not need to pause... Like clicking to close and it doing nothing for a while then out of nowhere it responds again, and I click and it closes.

Im just going to go back to basics and do a full fresh reinstall onto a fully reset BIOS, installing ONLY the newest drivers ( already downloaded ) and see how that goes?

The thing is, that I had issues with this machine the day I got it ( couple of weeks ago ) and I had to download the latest Windows 10 as it would not accept the drivers on my normal win10 installation media, but it did with the latest... There could be a link-cause in there somewhere?