Slow laptop. Win 10?

iKratos · November 2, 2019

Hi, my laptop is from 2012 year and is i7 3rd gen, 8 gb ram, 4gb nvidia, 256 gb ssd. I am using win 10 pro but it gets so slow from time to time and can't even use chrome properly and photoshop and I can feel resource is being clogged up. Suddenly the taskbar will restart from time to time and it makes me sick. I can't upgrade at the moment but will soon so have to manage for the time being. Is there any light version of windows 10 or how can I make win 10 pro run smooth in my system?

danomicar · November 2, 2019

8 minutes ago, iKratos said:

Hi, my laptop is from 2012 year and is i7 3rd gen, 8 gb ram, 4gb nvidia, 256 gb ssd. I am using win 10 pro but it gets so slow from time to time and can't even use chrome properly and photoshop and I can feel resource is being clogged up. Suddenly the taskbar will restart from time to time and it makes me sick. I can't upgrade at the moment but will soon so have to manage for the time being. Is there any light version of windows 10 or how can I make win 10 pro run smooth in my system?

Hey there. Had a similar issue.

Have you tried completely wiping your drive and doing a fresh install of windows 10?

iKratos · November 2, 2019

1 minute ago, danomicar said:

Hey there. Had a similar issue.

Have you tried completely wiping your drive and doing a fresh install of windows 10?

No use. Same thing starts happening within a day or two.

Nord · November 3, 2019

Windows 10 should not be the cause of the issue, we got similar weak machines at work and they run it fine, well at least as fine as can be expected from the hardware, and that is including invasive antivirus systems and constant sharepoint & office365 synchronisations.

A fading taskbar is usually a sign of windows installing something, like more broken updates, or an issue with the explorer. I would start by figuring out if there is a specific program or OS process causing high usage, use resource monitor for this and if you find something the solution should be obvious.

If you can't nail it down it's probably a good idea to disable all the automatic windows task you can find, defragmentation, updates (set your connection to metered), telemetry, definitely kill cortana if you use it and if in doubt there are various ways in which you can disable the “eye candy” of windows 10 to make it a bit more lightweight.

And just in case, if your SSD is filled up to more than 85%~ capacity, this can, rarely, also cause issues thanks to pagefile & system restore points and depending on the SSD manufacturer it could aslo be, simply put, just having built a cheap shitty SSD.

On the other hand, it could also be simple overheating of the SSD/CPU or rather - unless you do not have an U CPU - turbo throttling for the CPU, especially on such an old device. But this again would most likely be caused by some "malfunctioning" background process...

N004Drake · November 3, 2019

Update some drivers. or check your storage drives health. Check for bios updates. DO a full virus scan, and a malware check. I am only suggesting this as i do not see nay trouble shooting steps you have already taken. I had an issue with my old computer i just upgraded literally within the week. my ssd that was 9 months old was taking a dive. but it was subtle Chrome would lock my computer up for about 30 sec i couldn't click or do anything but i could move the mouse and then the task bar would flash. when i installed my new OS on new computer i used a different drive. and now no issues after everything is updated.