why is this laptop running slow?

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 21:56

my partners laptop is now about 4/5 years old. when bought new it was a really good laptop, but it runs so incredibly painfully slow now that it's almost totally unusable. as she barely does anything on it, we decided best to do a full factory reset and go back to bare brand new state laptop, however this didn't fix anything. it's still painful to use, e.g. when you open the browser, and it's in window mode, when you click full screen, it's up to 10 seconds before this happens, and in that time you can do nothing with the browser.

the specs aren't bad, and the system usage doesn't seem particualrly scary high.

this laptop is bascially new with nothing other than chrome installed.

cpu: i7 6500u 2.5ghz
8gb ram
windows 10

when one drive is running it uses 100% of hard disk, which i had hoped was the issue, but we've disabled that from auto running now.

still the slowness is there,

any advice?

scrivz69 · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:00

HDD might be on it's way out, or maybe getting too hot.

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:18

would that explain why the maximising of a window takes so long?

scrivz69 · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:24

Could be I would check the temps, generic laptop hdd's are pretty pants at the best of times. I have done loads that have died and the laptop is knocking on a bit.

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:36

howd i check the hdd temp? the issue happens even right at starting up

scrivz69 · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:38

Try this https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html Sounds like it's getting hot from the start.

KompuKare · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:49

You could always find a program to read the full SMART info of the drive.
As for whether it could cause maximising a window to be glacial?
Guess it could be a HDD driver issue but even with 8GB it shouldn't have any reason to hit the HDD then.
Driver issues can be hard to track down.
A driver issue might be driver expecting something, and then getting into a muddle polling all the time.
It might not even be the obvious how a certain hardware's driver is at fault.
For instance, I once came across this Acer laptop where the battery was gone. Nothing special, batteries die all the time. But the power management driver constantly poled the battery, received no or an unexpected answered and the driver hogged the whole machine. Taking out the battery cured it, and so did disabling the battery in device manager. The original problem was the most pointer being very very slow. So sometimes it's is not obvious.
The default task manager doesn't list hardware interrupts for instance, but Process Explorer and the like do.

darael · 28 Jul 2021 at 00:17

These days I use Clear Disk Info to check a drive's health. But, as it's relatively unheard of, some might say use the tried and tested CrystalDiskInfo, which I personally hate and find bloated.

edscdk · 28 Jul 2021 at 01:19

It has a hdd throw it away or fit a ssd,

A 3rd gen i3 with ssd would destroy your i7 hdd for almost all home user tasks

ED209 · 28 Jul 2021 at 11:02

Check event viewer and see if there is any HDD errors or bad blocks.

Does the laptop have 2 HDDs in at all? If so was the 2nd still connected when you did the re install as Windows has a habbit of storing stuff on the 2nd drive.

I would replace the HDD with a 250/500GB SSD and then re install the OS, make sure no other HDDs etc are connected while installing the OS as then to keep it all on then SSD

unwashed potato! · 28 Jul 2021 at 11:29

Thanks will do as advised.

Are most laptops able to have the hard drive changed to an ssd? Figured there was a specific slot in laptops and it had to be one size, and also figured ssd and hdd are different sizes?

Orcvader · 28 Jul 2021 at 13:00

Older laptops uses 2.5" HDDs which is the exactly the same size as SATA SSDs.

I highly suggest checking any of the software above to see what the current HDD model is though, just to make sure it's a SATA drive.

Minstadave · 28 Jul 2021 at 13:29

Apex said:
Thanks will do as advised.

Are most laptops able to have the hard drive changed to an ssd? Figured there was a specific slot in laptops and it had to be one size, and also figured ssd and hdd are different sizes?

What laptop is it? An SSD will likely cure your issues.

CrimsonAvenger · 28 Jul 2021 at 13:51

Minstadave said:
What laptop is it? An SSD will likely cure your issues.

This. Move to a SSD and the usage will drop.

unwashed potato! · 28 Jul 2021 at 18:32

It's a lenovo idea pad 510.

The hard drive is 1tb WDC hdd 5400rpm.

I downloaded clear disk info, and the all says status OK. 3855 hours of use.

watercooledman · 28 Jul 2021 at 18:33

Be a crappy windows update.
Nuke it and reinstall windows 10 all will be fine.

CrimsonAvenger · 28 Jul 2021 at 18:37

I think the disk could be swapped to a SSD. The disk is the bottle neck on your system. As has been said a clean Windows 10 install might speed it up a bit but ultimately the disk in the laptop is the problem.

unwashed potato! · 28 Jul 2021 at 19:09

It just had a clean install done though.

What makes you say it's the hdd for sure?

CrimsonAvenger · 28 Jul 2021 at 19:32

Here read this.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/ssd-vs-hdd-which-is-best-for-your-needs

KompuKare · 28 Jul 2021 at 19:41

To totally eliminate hardware and drivers, you could download a live Linux and boot of that.
If in Linux everything works fine, the rest of the hardware is fine.
A live Linux is a very quick way to determine whether the hardware is faulty.
Won't eliminate the HDD unless you install Linux to HDD too. And installing Linux to the HDD might mean losing recovery partitions, not sectors etc., making no longer a super quick diagnostic tool.