Poor user experience on a laptop

[cme227]

Hello, I'm using a pretty underpowered laptop by today's standarts. I have no way of upgrade and I'm stuck with it for some time. I gave up on gaming long time ago but even using the laptop on everyday tasks like web browsing, listening music feels choppy. It starts to fall apart when I try to open more than one app. The pc stutters and sometimes stops responding for seconds. What can I do to improve this?

Asus K555UB

i5 6200u

8gb ram

Geforce 940m

240GB Toshiba TR200 SSD + 1TB HDD

Windows 10 20H2

[SupaKomputa]

check the temp.

you might also wanna check the ssd health.

[Murasaki]

I was obviously going to suggest an SSD but you have one installed already... yet music is feeling choppy? The system specs don't really feel that bad so something else is going on.

[cme227]

Just now, SupaKomputa said:

check the temp.

you might also wanna check the ssd health.

Temps are chilly 40 celcius. SSD got replaced last year and current ones health is %89. Sorry I didn't mentioned the temps

 

[cme227]

1 minute ago, Murasaki said:

I was obviously going to suggest an SSD but you have one installed already... yet music is feeling choppy? The system specs don't really feel that bad so something else is going on.

Yeah when one program starts doing something, every single other starts lagging. When I got a notification for your reply, browser just stopped and thinked for a second. Music continues playing in background but spotify stops responding, UI elements does not load on other programs etc. etc. Everything falls apart

[pythonmegapixel]

Modern Windows is extremely bloated and that device is several years old so unfortunately it's not that surprising that you'd be experiencing some sluggishness. However, the system specs aren't that bad - it should still be usable. Have you tried a fresh install of Windows?

 

Make sure any data you're accessing regularly is on the SSD (I'm assuming the operating system is already installed there).  Also might be worth opening it up and seeing if you can clear dust out of the fans, as it might be throttling due to overheating.

[SupaKomputa]

check event viewer for errors and warnings.

[jaslion]

Odd my work laptop is basically these specs but one step up and I slam that thing every single day.

 

Whens the last time you did a fresh windows install? Windows gets extremely bloated over time.

 

 

As for temps can you just load up cinebench + anything gpu intensive at the same time so we can see what a huge thermal load does to it? Might be it's fine at idle but any load causes temp issue.

[cme227]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Modern Windows is extremely bloated and that device is several years old so unfortunately it's not that surprising that you'd be experiencing some sluggishness. However, the system specs aren't that bad - it should still be usable. Have you tried a fresh install of Windows?

 

Make sure any data you're accessing regularly is on the SSD (I'm assuming the operating system is already installed there).  Also might be worth opening it up and seeing if you can clear dust out of the fans, as it might be throttling due to overheating.

Yeah I replaced the ssd and reinstalled windows. And yeah all my everyday apps are on ssd. The only reason I'm keeping the hdd is because photos, videos etc. Stress tested the cpu overnight with xtu and end result was 40-45 avg and 55 celcius max so no thermal throttling

[cme227]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Odd my work laptop is basically these specs but one step up and I slam that thing every single day.

 

Whens the last time you did a fresh windows install? Windows gets extremely bloated over time.

 

 

As for temps can you just load up cinebench + anything gpu intensive at the same time so we can see what a huge thermal load does to it? Might be it's fine at idle but any load causes temp issue.

Fresh install was 2 months ago.

When only stress testing the cpu, It reaches peak 55 on overnight run. When I throw furmark at it for gpu, both lock at 95 degrees and cpu throttles down to 2.2ghz in 10 minutes. But I gave up using 940m. Everyday apps use the hd graphics anyway. And I replaced the thermal paste, and fan. Using coolermaster mastergel pro v1 for thermal paste.

[PineyCreek]

1 minute ago, cme227 said:

Fresh install was 2 months ago.

When only stress testing the cpu, It reaches peak 55 on overnight run. When I throw furmark at it for gpu, both lock at 95 degrees and cpu throttles down to 2.2ghz in 10 minutes. But I gave up using 940m. Everyday apps use the hd graphics anyway. And I replaced the thermal paste, and fan. Using coolermaster mastergel pro v1 for thermal paste.

Your fresh install might have been two months ago, but 20H2 has come out since then, bringing with widespread audio issues and secondary storage dropping offline, along with various USB-related ailments.  I'd try reinstalling chipset and audio drivers.  Nuclear option is to fresh install again.  Of course, look at event viewer and things like that first.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, cme227 said:

Fresh install was 2 months ago.

When only stress testing the cpu, It reaches peak 55 on overnight run. When I throw furmark at it for gpu, both lock at 95 degrees and cpu throttles down to 2.2ghz in 10 minutes. But I gave up using 940m. Everyday apps use the hd graphics anyway. And I replaced the thermal paste, and fan. Using coolermaster mastergel pro v1 for thermal paste.

Ok you basically did everything you could for cooling then so that is really good on you!

 

How is the hdd health doing? would not be the first time a poor hdd freaks out windows and makes it chugg. Also check if the page file in on your ssd not hdd that can also commonly happen when a second drive is connected when installing windows.

 

As we are on the topic how is ram useage how much is used versus in page file?

 

How is the cpu and gpu load doing?

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Your fresh install might have been two months ago, but 20H2 has come out since then, bringing with widespread audio issues and secondary storage dropping offline, along with various USB-related ailments.  I'd try reinstalling chipset and audio drivers.  Nuclear option is to fresh install again.  Of course, look at event viewer and things like that first.

This very much worst case go back to a version that isn't 20h2.

[PineyCreek]

8 minutes ago, jaslion said:

This very much worst case go back to a version that isn't 20h2.

Honestly I think it's the installation process of 20H2 itself that borks the system, not necessarily the version itself.  Also, it seems the issues happen far more often on laptops.  When I installed 20H2 on my desktop I just had to my audio device back to the one I wanted.  However, when I installed it on a different desktop I manage that also has multiple HDMI capture cards in it, nothing worked right until the chipset drivers (just updated with the latest ones from AMD) and the capture card drivers were reinstalled. If I were in the same place, I think I would try to use the Media Creation Tool for Win10 with the latest build (which probably includes 20H2) to reinstall and see what happens, if OP really wants to go that route.

[xriqn]

1 hour ago, cme227 said:

Hello, I'm using a pretty underpowered laptop by today's standarts. I have no way of upgrade and I'm stuck with it for some time. I gave up on gaming long time ago but even using the laptop on everyday tasks like web browsing, listening music feels choppy. It starts to fall apart when I try to open more than one app. The pc stutters and sometimes stops responding for seconds. What can I do to improve this?

Asus K555UB

i5 6200u

8gb ram

Geforce 940m

240GB Toshiba TR200 SSD + 1TB HDD

Windows 10 20H2

 

1 hour ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Modern Windows is extremely bloated and that device is several years old so unfortunately it's not that surprising that you'd be experiencing some sluggishness. However, the system specs aren't that bad - it should still be usable. Have you tried a fresh install of Windows?

 

Make sure any data you're accessing regularly is on the SSD (I'm assuming the operating system is already installed there).  Also might be worth opening it up and seeing if you can clear dust out of the fans, as it might be throttling due to overheating.

I'd like to expand on this comment from python, as he mentioned using a fresh install of Windows. You might want to try redoing your fresh Windows install, but this time try using some Windows 10 debloating tools, I highly recommend this one as it really does help clear up all of that unwanted, performance borking rubbish that Microsoft has added into Windows, it's really brought my oldest laptop back to life and that one has an i5 3317U in it so tools like this should definitely get your laptop running well once more. I'd also check the health of your SSD because despite it only being a recent addition to your system, there's still every chance that you could have a defective part. But if that's not the case, check that Windows is regularly optimising the drive by going to start, type in "defrag" and then run the "Defragment and optimise drives" option that shows up, this will show all your drives in your computer and it will allow you to either set a schedule for when drives are defragmented (HDDs) or optimised (TRIM operation performed on SSD) or you can manually perform these actions.

[cme227]

54 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Your fresh install might have been two months ago, but 20H2 has come out since then, bringing with widespread audio issues and secondary storage dropping offline, along with various USB-related ailments.  I'd try reinstalling chipset and audio drivers.  Nuclear option is to fresh install again.  Of course, look at event viewer and things like that first.

the thing is, it was never about 20h2. I use this laptop since 2015 and it was always like this. I thought it was about hdd but buying ssd didn't help that much about stutters. When I make a fresh install, Its good for about a week and It goes downhill after that. It was always like this.

[PineyCreek]

1 minute ago, cme227 said:

the thing is, it was never about 20h2. I use this laptop since 2015 and it was always like this. I thought it was about hdd but buying ssd didn't help that much about stutters. When I make a fresh install, Its good for about a week and It goes downhill after that. It was always like this.

Ah, I see.  Then disregard what I said.  I misunderstood the background.

[AMD A10-9600P]

That's odd, I was able to use an i3-3217U laptop with just a HDD for some SolidWorks until I got my new laptop. Either you've downloaded something dodgy, or Windows update has messed up somewhere, as for normal use that machine should still be capable of doing most tasks. Try using the Windows 10 disk cleanup tool for both the SSD and HDD, and then run a scan with Windows Defender. Then double check by scanning with a third party antivirus.

[cme227]

I was thinking about cpu being super underpowered. Even clicking a different windows rockets the cpu usage from %5 to %70. And the other theory I have is cpu has x28 multiplier for single core and x27 for dual core. And from what I see, smallest task in pc makes it jump from single to dual core frequency and stutters ocur in that time frame. Or am I hoping so much multitasking from dual core?

[xriqn]

1 minute ago, cme227 said:

I was thinking about cpu being super underpowered. Even clicking a different windows rockets the cpu usage from %5 to %70. And the other theory I have is cpu has x28 multiplier for single core and x27 for dual core. And from what I see, smallest task in pc makes it jump from single to dual core frequency and stutters ocur in that time frame.

The CPU is far from underpowered, it's Windows 10 that happens to be the problem. Read my original comment, it should shed some light on some stuff for you

[cme227]

13 minutes ago, xriqn said:

The CPU is far from underpowered, it's Windows 10 that happens to be the problem. Read my original comment, it should shed some light on some stuff for you

Yeah I'll surely try that debloating tool and reinstall using that. My little i5 needs to hold on for some more time.

[cme227]

16 hours ago, xriqn said:

The CPU is far from underpowered, it's Windows 10 that happens to be the problem. Read my original comment, it should shed some light on some stuff for you

reinsalled, debloated, went to sleep, woke up and its slow as before again. not even a single program is installed except spotify

[pythonmegapixel]

3 hours ago, cme227 said:

reinsalled, debloated, went to sleep, woke up and its slow as before again. not even a single program is installed except spotify

Possibly try booting a live USB stick (don't use a tiny one, 16GB or so should probably be fine) with a lightweight Linux distribution - maybe you could try Xubuntu (https://xubuntu.org/) unless you already have a preferred one.

 

You don't have to actually be comfortable using Linux, and unless you actually choose to install it on your system it won't overwrite the data on your hard drive - but on the USB stick you can install Spotify and download some of the PDFs you need to read, do your usual thing for a few hours, and see whether the performance is better. This helps with working out whether it's a Windows problem or a fault with your hardware.

[cme227]

3 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Possibly try booting a live USB stick (don't use a tiny one, 16GB or so should probably be fine) with a lightweight Linux distribution - maybe you could try Xubuntu (https://xubuntu.org/) unless you already have a preferred one.

 

You don't have to actually be comfortable using Linux, and unless you actually choose to install it on your system it won't overwrite the data on your hard drive - but on the USB stick you can install Spotify and download some of the PDFs you need to read, do your usual thing for a few hours, and see whether the performance is better. This helps with working out whether it's a Windows problem or a fault with your hardware.

yeah linux works much better but sometimes I need windows for special tasks. I use Sony Vegas for example. Or we just throw some aoe lan parties with friends so I don't really want to go linux.