Stupidly slow laptop

Mickcas

Mickcas

Mickcas

Associate
Joined
21 Jan 2017
Posts
735
Location
County Durham
So my wife's little brother currently has a Lenovo legion y520 he's asked me to have a look at as he was complaining of it running slow. Before turning it on I whipped the bottom off and got rid of all the duat, nice and simple.

I then come to turn it on, about 5minutes later I get to the login screen, it's beyond what I would call slow. Funny thing is after about 30mins I was in and had the storage open and he's hardly used any space up.

Aside from a full fresh install. Which I don't want to do and he doesn't have a copy of Windows what's the best course of action and what should I check for to try and speed this thing up
 
If it’s got a mechanical HDD, buy a cheap SSD and be done with it. Anything else you try and do won’t make anywhere near the same impact (with the exception possibly of ditching Windows for Linux).
 
paradigm said:
If it’s got a mechanical HDD, buy a cheap SSD and be done with it. Anything else you try and do won’t make anywhere near the same impact (with the exception possibly of ditching Windows for Linux).
Click to expand...
I thought about that but wasn't sure what to do about windows
 
Clone to the SSD using Macrium Reflect. But it’s likely there’s an issue with Windows as even booting from a mechanical drive shouldn’t be that slow.
 
Yeah this ain't justechanical drive. I've just loaded into Windows and it's taking around 5 minutes at best to even open task manager, seems like everything i ask it to do take a good few minutes even very simple tasks
 
Might be worth testing the HDD to see if it's still alright.

However, My Dads PC decided it just didn't like Windows anymore and had symptoms exactly like you described, checked all hardware and it was all fine. Only choice was to reinstall Windows. You can still get downloads for most versions of Windows online.
 
So just spoke to him, no need to back anything up at all. So what's the best way to go about this. I don't want to loose windows so not sure?
 
You could download some live Linux and try running it from USB stick.
That should show if there's something in hardware, or if its Windows/software.

Mickcas said:
I don't want to loose windows so not sure?
Click to expand...
Unless there's physical problem with drive, which should give errors, recovery partition has Windows installation data.
If there's nothing important stored on it, that certainly simplifies fixing it no matter if it's hardware or software problem.
 
What windows does it have?

If you don't have the right windows disc you can download most from microsoft in .ISO format example win 10 - https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

as long as you have a legit key you enter this on their site, it allows the download. Then you either burn to disc or use their USB tool and put it on a USB.

boot from disc/usb - reinstall.

Alternatively you can use the windows restore function (if its installed on the harddrive it will have a copy of windows you can restore to factory etc) however i prefer the above method as you can wipe all this crap that comes with the PC and install ONLY the windows + drivers required.



I would recommend checking the HD first make sure its not broken, 100% usage could either indicate the HD is ready to fail and needs to be replaced or it could have some curruption/virus/malware etc.

If that is all OK then proceed with wiping/reinstalling


as for speed its most likely issues with installation or the HD, if you want to add speed obviously get a SSD harddrive when replacing which will allow faster boot times etc, you can't do anything with the CPU upgrade. MIght be able to upgrade the ram a bit

how old is this laptop?

edit: not sure if it has it but lenovo usally come with novo key, press f2 on boot enter recovery system - system recovery in windows

also this model usually comes with small SSD for OS and HHD for software/files so it might already have a SSD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom