Why is my Laptop So Slow

Why is my Laptop So Slow

As long as your laptop is new and isn’t in the program’s accumulation phase, you’ll find your laptop’s response time at its best. However, when it starts packing up more files and programs, eventually your laptop’s response time drops. Whereas, executing different processes starts to take longer because of more CPU consumption. On the other hand, it lowers your productivity level. That’s when you start asking yourself that why is my laptop so slow all of a sudden.

However, conducting some basic maintenance on your slow laptop can make a big difference in your machine’s performance. Such as making your laptop’s hard drive free of unwanted data, enabling the windows hard drive utilities. Whereas, keeping your laptop from running the programs that are not needed when your laptop starts can add up more to your laptop’s performance.

However, other reasons cause your laptop to be laggy which I am about to discuss in a bit. But one of the most important ones is the malware that plays an important role in eating up your CPU which is not the case most of the time. Whereas, running antivirus is a better solution for that. Keep in mind, the steps that I’ll be mentioning are for Windows users.

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Reasons for a Slow Laptop

Simple Fixes

As I mentioned earlier, freeing the hard drive from unwanted files and programs can be a great relief. Whereas, running the windows hard drive utilities is highly recommended. To achieve a faster startup, make sure you prevent the launching of the programs upon boot up which is better maintenance for RAM, making your laptop perform faster.

On the other hand, rebooting your laptop is ideal after installing new programs, error fixes, Windows updates and even initializing drivers on your operating system.

Too Many Programs Running at Startup

There are some programs at startup that you might need daily. But what about the ones that you don’t need at all and these are the programs that consume much of your laptop resources. To fix that all you need to do is to click on the ‘Start menu and type in “misconfig”. A window will pop up on your screen. The next step is to select the ‘Start-up’ and look for the programs that you don’t need regularly. Disable or remove them.

Make sure you also keep your laptop free from scheduled processes. Some of the simple examples of this are Antivirus scanning or running of the security utility or full system scan in the background which can cause your laptop to perform slow. Scheduling these processes at a convenient time would be much better at this point.

Programs That are Consuming More Resources

fix your slow laptop

The other thing you need to do is to open up your Task Manager on your Windows menu, click on processes and look for the memory and CPU options. There you’ll find all the running programs that are consuming your laptop resources. There may appear some background programs that you don’t use and frozen sites. Click on the End-Task option to add up more value to your laptop performance.

Tons of Temporary files

Here’s a simple thing that some of you might don’t know. When you run any programs or visit any website on your laptop, some temporary files get stored on the hard drive of your computer. Whereas, on older laptops, this junk is large in number which eventually affects your laptop response time.

There’s one simple step you need to conduct. Open up the windows disk cleanup utility which will help to delete those unwanted files.

However, this tool isn’t that convenient in flushing all of those files. You need to delete the rest of the files manually.

Here’s what should be done:

fix a hanging laptop with cleaning temp folder

Go to Start Menu, using the search bar type in %temp%. You’ll find a temp folder on the menu. Select all of the files inside the folder and delete them. Still, some files are not going to be deleted. Skipping them is the only option that you have.

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Fragmented Hard Drive

It’s the story of almost all older laptops where the files on the system get fragmented on the hard drive over time. Dealing with it becomes pretty easy with the defragmentation process. Identifying the physical issues with the hard drive is the step you need to consider. To achieve that you have to run SanDisk. However, on different operating systems we have different defrag tools and scanning steps.

But here are the simple steps to achieve that without any effort:

fragmented files

  • Typing in the word “drefrag” on the main menu is your first step to carry out.
  • You’ll see “Defragment and Optimize Drives” on the menu where you’ll need to open the tools. There is your hard drive that you need to find.
  • To start the defragmentation process, select the “Optimize” option.
  • When the process is done, “0% fragmented” will show up. simple as that.

Low Space On Your Drive

Usually, when the space on your hard drive is near to almost 95%, it means, your laptop lost most of its utilization. Whereas, carrying a large number of files is the biggest reason for that. To keep the hard drive smooth, the free space must be around 20%-25%.

Low RAM Memory

It’s a common case for most of the cheaper laptops. Usually, a RAM with 4GB memory has an acceptable capacity for multi-tasking. However, when it comes down to almost 2GB memory, that’s where a laptop starts hesitating in running multiple tasks at a time. Out of the above 6 hanging laptop reasons, this one is the possibility where your laptop needs an upgrade.

Conclusion
These 7 steps are just a few among many steps where you can fix a slow laptop. Keep in mind, all laptops are different, and reading their user manual is the most important thing that you can’t miss. Whereas, the above seven steps can be carried out to fix some common issues for speeding up your laptop.

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