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?

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:18

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

unwashed potato! · 27 Jul 2021 at 22:36

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

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?

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.

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?

unwashed potato! · 29 Jul 2021 at 19:31

If the drive is not faulty, why would it be running slow now, compared to super speedy when it was new?

I thought win10 was on it at new, but honestly it's too long ago to remember

unwashed potato! · 13 Feb 2022 at 13:44

bump on this. going to purchase an SSD for this laptop.

Can someone tell me which we'd need that will fit this laptop? I've confident with my ability to make desktop pcs but have never once opened up a laptop.

unwashed potato! · 13 Feb 2022 at 18:17

Minstadave said:
You want a 2.5" SATA3 SSD.

Very simple, looks like you should have a flap on the bottom to access it:

https://youtu.be/4M4nWtFtocM

You will need to either do a fresh Windows install or clone your existing install across using either a USB device or a desktop PC.

should have done this ages ago. realised i had a 500gb ssd in my old pc in loft. took it out, 3 minutes later it's in her laptop and working flawlessly.