Does your new laptop perform poorly? Does it take an unnecessarily long time to start? Are programs taking up more time to load than expected?
Laptops get slower as they get older, but you shouldn’t have to deal with a performance that is as slow as a turtle when you buy a new laptop.
Good laptops last a long time and are always better than average in terms of quality. However, there are occasions when things do not proceed as smoothly as desired.
Someone buys a new laptop with the expectation that it’ll be as fast or faster than a laptop that’s over the hill, only to find that it is as slow or, worse, slower. If this is you, keep reading this article.
We will provide you with more information that could help you solve your laptop situation. Nothing is more frustrating than not knowing what to do. If you’re a gamer, you may want to read articles about upgrading gaming laptops.
What Causes Your Laptop to Run Slowly?
To find out why your laptop is performing at a turtle’s pace, it is important to know what is happening with it. Does your laptop take donkey’s years to start up? Or does it take a long time to respond to mouse and keyboard input?
Is your laptop sluggish and takes forever to load when accessing the internet, or is it completely frozen and unusable? You might raise your eyebrows to learn that a lot of things can make your laptop seem slow all together.
Bloatware
It is common for most of these mass-manufactured laptops to come with software that is not just unnecessary, but also harmful. These junks are also referred to as bloatware.
Getting rid of everything that is not important shouldn’t take much of your time, and doing so can make a huge difference.
What You Can Do
In Windows 10, the easiest way to see everything that’s installed on your laptop is by pressing the Windows Key, then simply type “Add or Remove Programs.”
If you are not sure whether you should remove a particular program, don’t worry, Google is your friend! You can type the name on Google and check if it’s something of importance or just a random program that the manufacturer installed.
Too Many Programs Running on Startup
Handling multiple tasks at once will make you slower. Many of us, therefore, don’t believe in multitasking.
Running too many applications simultaneously on a laptop can cause problems such as Windows taking donkey’s years to shut down, or worse, the whole system crashes because the software you run becomes unresponsive.
What You Can Do
You can start off by improving the startup list. You can do this by disabling or removing apps that start automatically.
You can achieve this with efficiency using CleanMyPC.
Checking if there are any programs running in the background and how many resources are available in the system would be the next step.
The Task Manager is where you can see what’s going on and get a clear picture. You could try shutting down any unnecessary processes.
In some cases, however, it’s the security software that’s eating up your lappy’s system resources.
We suggest you use a light antispyware program like MalwareBytes and make sure to adjust its settings.
Running Out of Space
You may have heard the myth that having more disk space will make your laptop perform faster.
It is generally good practice to keep at least 15 percent of your laptop’s hard drive (or SSD) free. This will help make your laptop work a lot better and stop it from freezing.
What you can do
You can start by cleaning your laptop’s main drive. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as it sounds because there’s really no one-fix-for-all.
We suggest you transfer large files, especially important files including videos and photos, which usually consume more disk space compared to other files.
You can also save space by removing applications you don’t normally use, especially those third-party programs that take up large amounts of space.
Overheating
When the CPU is working hard to process tasks, any laptop will get hot, and you’ll feel the fan working hard to cool it down.
When your laptop’s heat sink is filled with dust or your laptop is exposed to high temperatures for a long period, it’s more likely to overheat.
If that were to happen, the consequences could be huge.
What you can do
First, you should get a cooling pad for your laptop, as this will help significantly. You could also check to make sure the heat sink is clear of dust.
If the heat sink tube appears to be blocked, you can use a can of compressed gas duster to blow the dust out.
Also, it’s advisable to avoid opening several programs simultaneously, especially heavier apps like Photoshop, as they require more resources to run well. Again, you should avoid multitasking as much as possible.
Conclusion
Typically, the slow performance of a laptop cannot be resolved in just a few minutes. Having said that, we hope these solutions can help speed up your sluggish laptop and restore its former glory.
