My Laptop runs excruciatingly slow

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Kevin Lane

Kevin Lane

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My Laptop runs excruciatingly slow. Booting up even is minimum 10 min. After that it keeps freezing and opening a program is multi min after clicking. Mostly it shows as 100% disk usage in Task manager. Processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3230M CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz with 4 GB of RAM. My questions are...

1. How can I diagnose and rectify this?
2. Will RAM upgrade and adding SSD for OS help?
 
Am assuming that the OS is Windows 10. 10 mins of boot up time is too much.
Check what processes are configured to start up when windows boots up. There's a startup tab on the task manager which will give you a fair idea. For a more comprehensive view you can run the Autoruns64 utility from the Sysinternals suite. This is a wonderful set of tools which can be used for troubleshooting purposes. There's a tool called Process Explorer in this suite which will show details of all the processes running on the system along with their resource utilization. The sysinternals tools can be downloaded from:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
Also check what is the RAM and processor utilization. If it is running out of memory it may be constantly utilizing the swap file on the disk resulting in constant disk activity.
As @RadarHz and @ishashank mentioned adding an SSD for the OS and adding more RAM will definitely help.
 
Kevin Lane said:
2. Will RAM upgrade and adding SSD for OS help?
Click to expand...
While this will GREATLY improve your experience, you still need to diagnose the issue.
As soon as your pc is booted up, open task manger and sort processes by disk usage and you will most likely find your culprit( post a screenshot here too). Also go in startup tab in task manger and disable things you don't need at startup ( post a screenshot here of that too).
 
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This issue has plagued Windows users for a long time. I faced it as well. The disk usage constantly stays at 100% and laptop slows down to a crawl. This happens very often on HDDs, hardly happens on SSDs. I searched a lot but could not find an answer as to how to rectify this.

That said, your laptop is quite old and apart from this issue, it would still be showing its age. I would recommend adding an SSD as they are cheap and easily reusable/resaleable. However, I am assuming your laptop will have DDR3 RAM. I wouldn't recommend spending money on DDR3 RAM at this stage, unless you see yourself using this laptop for another year at least.

My recommendation would be to get an SSD. Make sure you get a 2.5" SATA SSD, your laptop is pretty old and unlikely to have an M.2 slot. Once you have put in the SSD and done a fresh install of Windows, see if things get better. If they do, then check if your laptop's RAM is upgradable at all. If yes, then decide on getting a RAM.
 
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This is same with every hdd based windows laptop . Started around 3 years ago, before that windows was fine. These days every windows laptop has this problem. They are just too thick to care. 3 laptops with this 100% disk usage issue - Mine , brothers and SIL's. Thats why I am sure it's incredibly common.

I have tried every solution on the internet - disable this that this that service etc. Nothing changes.



Your options - install Linux or get an ssd. Your hardware is quite old but SSD and Ram should make it usable for browsing etc
 
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I can corelate and share the experience also after an upgrade.

I have an old HP laptop, i3-3110M. I upgraded it to an SSD back in 2014-15. An old Intel X25-M Gen 1 80GB SSD used I bought from good old days when ebay.in existed. Boy I was amazed with the performance and never looked back. I immediately set my goal to upgrade my desktop as well so I bought another of those and I was blown by the experience even on a Core 2 Duo.

Coming to present day, that laptop still works and has a better but still DRAM-less SSD. With currently 16GB RAM works just fine for daily tasks but there's a huge disclaimer. If you watch youtube videos a lot and/or other sites which make use of streaming using newer codecs such as VP09 (youtube does this a LOT) or AV1 your CPU usage is going to be very high and it's going to make multi-tasking a pain and experience a bit stuttery. This is because the integrated GPU (Intel HD 4000) does not support hardware decode/encode on those codecs and the job has to be done by the CPU instead . Nothing can be done about that.

Other than this the system is good for programming/document work, OTT streaming etc. Runs Win10 perfectly. I even ran Win11 v22H2 (Release Preview channel) fine after bypassing the check for TPM.

In conclusion, as others said make SSD upgrade your topmost priority if you want to continue using this laptop, RAM immediately next if you use web browsers.
If you can let go of it then sell it and buy a newer generation laptop.
 
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As others have said, Get a SSD and do a fresh install of windows.

I still have my sandybridge laptop from 2011 - I swapped the hard disk with a samsung 850 evo back in 2015? and the laptop is still snappy to use today.
 
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Getting a SSD will surely help. Also scan your system for any viruses or malware. Perhaps even doing a format to your Hard disk and doing a clean Windows Installation will help
 
Thank You All! This helps a lot.

I will go ahead with SSD and fresh Install! Yes, I will need to use SATA SSD. Will also need to use DVD drive slot with SSD Caddy (Getting rid of Optical Drive). Will go for 4->8 GB RAM upgrade too. My RAM usage currently runs between 60-80%. Upgrade will provide headroom.
 
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Kevin Lane said:
Thank You All! This helps a lot.

I will go ahead with SSD and fresh Install! Yes, I will need to use SATA SSD. Will also need to use DVD drive slot with SSD Caddy (Getting rid of Optical Drive). Will go for 4->8 GB RAM upgrade too. My RAM usage currently runs between 60-80%. Upgrade will provide headroom.
Click to expand...
Another thing, make sure you install the SDD where HDD is installed currently installed and install the HDD in caddy. Some manufacturers used to give SATA2 ports for optical drive and SATA3 for HDD. SATA2 would be limiting for SSD.
 
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I have AMD E series laptop with 2GB RAM. I had to wait dusk to dawn for it boot up. It'd take hours to open Chrome. I could watch YouTube in SD only. My wife left me. Life was in crisis.

Then I met an SSD, it changed my life completely. Now the boot takes less time than Virat Kohli's batting. I can watch YouTube in HD. Not only the wife came back but she brought me a son. Now he plays crysis.
 
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john1911 said:
Another thing, make sure you install the SDD where HDD is installed currently installed and install the HDD in caddy. Some manufacturers used to give SATA2 ports for optical drive and SATA3 for HDD. SATA2 would be limiting for SSD.
Click to expand...
How can I check his on my machine?
 
Before you go into formatting etc, please try this. This worked on my new laptop

www.minitool.com

Minimum Processor State Windows 10/11: 5%, 0%, 1%, 100%, or 99% - MiniTool

What’s the minimum processor state? What should my minimum processor state be? How to change, add, or remove the minimum processor state? Finds answers here!
www.minitool.com www.minitool.com

Please increase the minimum state value to somewhere in the 30-50% range. Save and restart. Do this for the power plan you're currently on.

Most modern laptops have incredibly low minimum States which conserve a lot of power to meet stringent energy saying regulations but it comes with crappy performance. If 50% makes things much better, try reducing it down to see how low it goes without affecting b performance

If you can upgrade Ram to 8gb and install windows on an SSD nothing like it. Your laptop will be almost as fast as most current machines
 
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Update : Replaced my HDD with an SSD. The machine is now a different thing altogether. Boots in seconds. Not lagging anymore for it's age! :) Yet to upgrade RAM capacity. Will do it mostly as current RAM usage goes to about 70%.
greenhorn said:
Just following up on this. Did the tweak i posted work?
Click to expand...
Sorry for late update. Actually my bottleneck was never the CPU. My issue was 100% disk usage.
SunnyBoi said:
Use the slot where HDD goes in for SSD, move old HDD to the caddy. This is sure fire way to get it right.
Click to expand...
Did just that!
 
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