biggs682
Touch it up and ride it
- Location
- Northamptonshire
And me
Breathing some life into a laptop
- Thread starter aferris2
- Start date
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And me
You might have all sorts of unnecessary crap loading up in the background when you switch on, which slow things down.
I use free software like CCleaner or IObit System Care which enable you to see what is starting in the background, and enables you enable or disable them as required.
I use free software like CCleaner or IObit System Care which enable you to see what is starting in the background, and enables you enable or disable them as required.
Impact maintenance... Dat's ma boy!
DCBassman
Guru
- Location
- The lumpy far South West
A machine with that spec, even without an SSD, should eat Win 10 for breakfast, so something is wrong. Definitely discard all anti-virus and anti-malware that runs continuously. Rely on Windows Security, backed up with weekly Malwarebytes scans. It really is enough.
Remove and reseat all RAM.
Religiously check for updates every Thursday or Friday. This will get big updates out of the way in a regulated fashion.
Try getting the antivirus out of the way first, if applicable. There's no way in hell a machine of that spec should take 10+ minutes to boot. My old Dell Studio 1735 takes less than a minute.
Spec for comparison: Core2 Duo T8100, 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm primary drive, 320GB secondary - these can actually have two drives.
Other suggestion: ensure you remove every single piece of software you don't need. Check. If performance improves, job done. Some software is really bad at hogging, and will eat any amount of system resources.
Remove and reseat all RAM.
Religiously check for updates every Thursday or Friday. This will get big updates out of the way in a regulated fashion.
Try getting the antivirus out of the way first, if applicable. There's no way in hell a machine of that spec should take 10+ minutes to boot. My old Dell Studio 1735 takes less than a minute.
Spec for comparison: Core2 Duo T8100, 4GB RAM, 500GB 7200rpm primary drive, 320GB secondary - these can actually have two drives.
Other suggestion: ensure you remove every single piece of software you don't need. Check. If performance improves, job done. Some software is really bad at hogging, and will eat any amount of system resources.
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DCBassman
Guru
- Location
- The lumpy far South West
Also, ensure that all processor features are switched on in BIOS. That's an 8-thread processor, it should churn through stuff at a brisk rate. Ensure also that EIST (Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology) is enabled, otherwise the processor defaults to a low speed.
DCBassman
Guru
- Location
- The lumpy far South West
And one more thing: if you don't actually use it on battery much, get into the power settings and create a new power plan based on high performance. Windows hides this by default. It makes a significant difference to any Windows PC, laptop or desktop.
swee'pea99
Legendary Member
It is. It won't. You end up back at square one. But fast!
Wow, lots of things to keep me busy. Thanks to everyone.
@Seevio I bought in 2013 without an OS. Fairly certain I started off with vista but updated to wind very quickly. Thanks for the link. Will try this.
@DCBassman thanks. Been into the bios settings fairly often but don't remember seeing EIST. Will have another look. From previous experiments I don't think the processor is running slow but who knows how fast the processor is running before the desktop appears. Power plan is already sorted. On mains is full speed with everything enabled. Battery uses balanced mode.
Have run ccleaner and winoptimizer. Neither came up with much. I run ccleaner every now and then so it's already got rid of stuff that it can find.
Not sure how far I'm going to get today. With visiting allowed now, I think we're on a trip to the inlaws today.
@Seevio I bought in 2013 without an OS. Fairly certain I started off with vista but updated to wind very quickly. Thanks for the link. Will try this.
@DCBassman thanks. Been into the bios settings fairly often but don't remember seeing EIST. Will have another look. From previous experiments I don't think the processor is running slow but who knows how fast the processor is running before the desktop appears. Power plan is already sorted. On mains is full speed with everything enabled. Battery uses balanced mode.
Have run ccleaner and winoptimizer. Neither came up with much. I run ccleaner every now and then so it's already got rid of stuff that it can find.
Not sure how far I'm going to get today. With visiting allowed now, I think we're on a trip to the inlaws today.
Spinning rust is the biggest problem for a laptop - the drives are already reduced speed for power savings. I have a very similar problem to you - a 2012 laptop which takes an age to boot, albeit to Windows 7 not 10 as it can't upgrade due to an early type of hybrid graphics. It's about 5 minutes or so to desktop and the HDD just thrashes constantly.
Upgrading to an SSD is the most logical place for you to start - I'd suggest a 500ish MB SSD which are around £50 in many places now, this should hugely improve application and OS load times. If you have external storage issues, I'd use an external drive.
As far as Windows 10 is concerned it's linked to your Microsoft account so you will be able to just log in once you've got it installed and then your system will activate automatically. No system disks required other than the USB installer you download from Microsoft's website.
Upgrading to an SSD is the most logical place for you to start - I'd suggest a 500ish MB SSD which are around £50 in many places now, this should hugely improve application and OS load times. If you have external storage issues, I'd use an external drive.
As far as Windows 10 is concerned it's linked to your Microsoft account so you will be able to just log in once you've got it installed and then your system will activate automatically. No system disks required other than the USB installer you download from Microsoft's website.
Inlaws is off today so I should find time to play.
Think I'm going to buy an SSD because that's definitely going to be an improvement.
Today I can try various flavours of removing and installing stuff with the hardware that I have in the bits box.
I might have to reveal that there is a desk under all of the clutter.
Think I'm going to buy an SSD because that's definitely going to be an improvement.
Today I can try various flavours of removing and installing stuff with the hardware that I have in the bits box.
I might have to reveal that there is a desk under all of the clutter.
DAMHIKT.
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
Given the spec of your laptop it’s not the hardware that is the problem. Nor is it Windows 10. It’s will be the stuff you’ve lumped on top of it such as your anti virus. Since your data is on a separate partition I’d do a clean install.
mistyoptic
Vintage
- Location
- A parallel reality
We had a similar problem with Mrs optic's PC on W10. In the end, after a lot of googling and reading, I ran a command "dism" in the command window.
This cleaned out a load of cr*p within Windows and made a heck of a difference. Best follow instructions within microsoft support community
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/deployment/fix-windows-update-errors
This cleaned out a load of cr*p within Windows and made a heck of a difference. Best follow instructions within microsoft support community
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/deployment/fix-windows-update-errors
First couple of experiments complete.
1. Remove all applications which have a tendency to run in the background - avast, malwarebytes, ccleaner, defragmenter, java, flash (had forgotten about that one). No change in start-up time.
2. Fitted old HDD and did a fresh install of Win10. Nothing else installed and the start-up time is down to about 4 minutes, but this is a full start from cold. M$ have changed the power options on Win10 and clicking shut-down now just does something similar to the Win7 hibernate and is a lot faster (about 2 minutes for me). You have to click on shut-down while holding the shift key to shut it down properly!
At least now I can see that I can get a reasonably fast start-up with just the basic Win10 installed. Will have to monitor if this changes while installing the apps that I actually use.
Have ordered an SSD which should arrive tomorrow, so I will repeat the install on that and see where it takes me.
1. Remove all applications which have a tendency to run in the background - avast, malwarebytes, ccleaner, defragmenter, java, flash (had forgotten about that one). No change in start-up time.
2. Fitted old HDD and did a fresh install of Win10. Nothing else installed and the start-up time is down to about 4 minutes, but this is a full start from cold. M$ have changed the power options on Win10 and clicking shut-down now just does something similar to the Win7 hibernate and is a lot faster (about 2 minutes for me). You have to click on shut-down while holding the shift key to shut it down properly!
At least now I can see that I can get a reasonably fast start-up with just the basic Win10 installed. Will have to monitor if this changes while installing the apps that I actually use.
Have ordered an SSD which should arrive tomorrow, so I will repeat the install on that and see where it takes me.
DCBassman
Guru
- Location
- The lumpy far South West
That's a machine thing, not W10.
