Slow Laptop: Causes and How to Fix It

With time, your laptop begins to collect more files and programs as a result of regular use. Eventually, this can decrease your laptop’s response time, making daily procedures take longer to perform and reducing your productivity. You can repair a sluggish laptop by performing routine maintenance on your machine, such as maximizing disk drive space and running the Windows hard disk energies. You can also avoid unwanted programs from releasing when your laptop starts and include more RAM to increase efficiency.

Why is Your Laptop So Slow?

There are several reasons why your laptop has become slow. The solution to the problem depends on how correct you have identified the cause.

Let’s find the reason:

Windows 10 Update Is Going On

This is, sadly, the most typical reason for a new laptop running sluggish. Your laptop has plenty of storage and CPU is practically new, there’s no factor for it to lag, right? However, Windows 10 jumps in and keep you await half an hour once you press the start button. Sound familiar?

Solution: well, it’s really bothersome to see the black screen with circling icon continuing. However, you can’t do much about this throughout a Windows 10 update.

Microsoft picks to do so for the security of your computer. Because 1 in 10 computer systems infected with viruses every month, according to statistics revealed by World Backup Day.

You’ve Got Too Many Programs Running At Once (Especially On Startup)

A laptop is still a computer. Its brain (processor, memory, etc.) is similar to we human beings. Handling multiple tasks concurrently will slow you down. That’s why many of us do not believe in multitasking.

The symptoms of having a lot of applications performing at once on a laptop consist of but not restricted to: the software application you run ends up being unresponsive, the mouse cursor freezes or barely moves, Windows takes longer or forever to close down, even worse, the whole system crashes.

Solution: Start with enhancing the start-up list by eliminating or disabling apps or services that automatically begin. Do so with effectiveness with CleanMyPC. Likewise, if you are using a new laptop, it’s probably bundled with lots of bloatware, uninstall them.

Next, check what tasks are running in the background and just how much system resources are offered. Task Manager is the place you can inspect and have a clear summary. Kill those heavy processes that you don’t need.

Note that sometimes it’s the security software that is over-consuming your laptop’s system resources. Make sure you are using a lightweight one like MalwareBytes and adjust relevant settings correctly.

Your Storage Disk Is Running Out Of Space

Although it’s a myth that more disk space means a faster laptop, in general, it’s good practice to preserve at least 15 percent of totally free area on your laptop hard disk drive (or SSD). This helps improve your laptop performance quite a bit and eliminate freezing issues.

Solution: Go ahead and clean your laptop primary drive. Sadly, it isn’t that easy as it sounds because there isn’t one-fit-all repair.

We advise you to start transferring massive files, especially videos and pictures that tend to take more disk space than other types of files — followed by getting rid of applications you don’t typically utilize, particularly those third-party programs that take gigabytes in size.

Last but not least, if you want to conserve time doing so. Grab CleanMyPC and use the Uninstaller feature and several other practical functions for efficiency.

Virus/Malware Is Slowing It Down

It’s not a surprise that viruses or harmful software can cause severe damages to any PC, as well as bogging down its total performance. Once you feel your laptop indeed acts up, for example, not able to close down the system, everything lags, web browsers locked up with tons of flash advertisements, etc. Most likely they’ve got you.

Solution: Simple! Check if your laptop has been infected by running an antivirus and anti-malware scan.

Microsoft has the built-in Windows Defender which are supposed to keep your laptop from any harmful hazards. However, it’s not the very best security software application. We discover Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Malwarebytes more exceptional, and they are a lot easier to use.

There are, obviously, plenty of good options available. Bear in mind to upgrade your security software frequently.

Overheating Is Burning Your Laptop

Any laptop will warm up when the CPU is running hard to procedure demands, and you’ll sense the fan striving trying to cool it down. When the heatsink tubes inside your laptop are filled with dust, or your PC is exposed to high temperature, chances are overheating is going to occur. If that happens, the repercussions can be enormous. This is another reason why your laptop is so slow all of a sudden.

Solution: First off, get a cooling pad like this for your laptop as this helps quite a bit. Then inspect if the heatsink is packed, utilize a can of compressed gas duster to blow it out.

Furthermore, avoid opening numerous programs at the very same time, particularly those “heavy” apps like Photoshop, Premiere, etc. that demand more resources to run efficiently. As soon as again — less or no multitasking at all.

Faulty Or Outdated Hardware

If your laptop has shown its age, the reason that it runs sluggishly now probably due to hardware problems. The hardware we are discussing here refers to the underperforming hard drive and insufficient memory (RAM). For example, 4GB RAM is perhaps the minimum requirement when you use your laptop for basic workplace work and web browsing.

Solution: So, if you’ve tried everything else and your notebook is still sluggish, attempt to upgrade the hardware.

How? There are two best practices here: including more RAM, and change your HDD with an SSD. SSD means a solid-state drive – method quick e r and quieter than a traditional spinning drive.

If you decide to buy a new one, we offer you to use our recommendations for choosing the best laptop.

More Ideas How to Fix Slow Laptop

  1. Update and run your laptop’s virus scanner to remove viruses and spyware. Malware can consume your laptop’s CPU resources and slow down your laptop’s performance.
  2. Click the Start button, type “msconfig” and push the “Enter” key to introduce the System Configuration screen. Navigate to the “Start-Up” tab and get rid of the check-in package next to every product you do not require working on your laptop. When you reboot your laptop, just the chosen programs will launch, freeing up resources on your machine.
  3. Click the Start button, type “add or eliminate programs” and press the “Enter” secret to launch the Add or Remove Programs screen. Click unneeded programs and after that click “Uninstall” to maximize space on your laptop’s hard disk.
  4. Click the Start button, type “disk clean-up” and push the “Enter” secret to introduce the Disk Cleanup energy. Place a checkmark in the box next to items you wish to delete, and after that click “OK” to tidy up your laptop’s hard disk drive.
  5. Click the Start button, type “disk defragmenter” and press the “Enter” key to introduce the Windows defragmenter utility. Select your laptop’s disk drive and click “Defragment disk” to consolidate files, which helps speed up the disk drive action time.
  6. Include more RAM to your laptop. This will bring more total memory that permits your laptop to run multiple programs at once with more speed.

Good to know: Back up important files and folders to avoid data loss, specifically if your laptop is older or experiences crashes and Windows mistakes.

Conclusion

It is necessary to understand that the slow operation of your laptop may be temporary, associated with the performance of some function (for example, downloading the Windows 10 update when the network connection is slow, and then just wait out this procedure and restart the laptop. More complex situations require direct intervention in the computer, such as searching for viruses and spyware, cleaning the system disk, defragmenting the disk, and so on.

If you are not sure what is the reason for the slow operation of the laptop, and the specialist is not around, then start the correction from easy to difficult.

Run the antivirus first. If the problem is not with viruses, then defragment the disk. Next-clearing the archives. Check how slow down the work of the laptop programs that load when Windows starts and which you can refuse. If the procedures have not solved the problem with the slow operation of the laptop, then you should think about how to speed up your device, and about the possibility of buying a new one, if it works at the limit of its capabilities.

Comments: 1
  1. Christy Carlson

    I have long noticed that my laptop is warming up, but I did not paid much attention to this. But then I realized that my laptop is slowing down from heating. I checked the cooler and it was clogged, I cleaned it, the laptop no longer heated up and no longer slowed down. But just in case, I bought a cooling pad. And now the laptop no longer slows down.

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