Laptop slow out of box (and 8 months later) with Windows 11

[Patbowl]

Purchased a new laptop from Walmart in December of 2022 and when I brought it home it started up and I chose Windows 11 for my install.

 

Since then it takes around 5-10 minutes for startup and has complete throttling of the CPU 80% of the time, even opening things like file explorer or device manager. I bought this laptop mainly because of a price deal of around $289USD and the fact it was ryzen, maybe that was a mistake.

 

Laptop:

HP -AMD Ryzen 3 - 128GB SSD - 2400 MHz - 4GB DDR4

Model 14-fq0033dx

 

I have already tried some online solutions, disabling superfetch, adjusted power settings, turn off start up apps, and other various things found when googling "New windows 11 slow"

 

There is a singular app (Cricut) and 2 photos (for background display) on the laptop other than normal out of box bloatware (which I've deleted a lot of those). Even before downloading those apps, the PC has ran slow(regular updates ran for it as well).

 

If anyone has any ideas on how to actually solve this issue, I would greatly appreciate it. (If more diagnostics need ran, I am halfway tech savvy and can run anything for more information)

[jaslion]

4gb of ram inst usable these days even for simple tasks.

 

You simply bought an underspecced laptop and other than adding more ram there is nothing to do here

 

Then couple it with a old weak cpu and slow low end ssd you have a rather slow laptop all the time. Especially since it needs to constantly push stuff from ram to disk to not run out of ram

 

You can upgrade the memory as its supposed to have 1 free slot. So you can put a 8gb 2400mhz stick in it. Which will help a fair bit

 

 

[mMontana]

It's short on ram. Try to upgrade it to 16gb, if you can.

Also, trimming the SSD might be a nice idea.

 

Your ryzen 3 is not the toughest piece of silicon on earth

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c08172942

But should be good enough to make your computer run.

[Patbowl]

8 minutes ago, jaslion said:

4gb of ram inst usable these days even for simple tasks.

 

You simply bought an underspecced laptop and other than adding more ram there is nothing to do here

 

Then couple it with a old weak cpu and slow low end ssd you have a rather slow laptop all the time. Especially since it needs to constantly push stuff from ram to disk to not run out of ram

 

You can upgrade the memory as its supposed to have 1 free slot. So you can put a 8gb 2400mhz stick in it. Which will help a fair bit

 

 

If I do install an extra stick of ram, would that at least make the PC bearable for my wife to do her cricut projects?

 

Or is this just a loss, try to sell the PC online and go for a new one?

[Brando212]

I have a similar laptop. it's an ASUS though but with the same R3. It's a decent enough laptop just needs the couple of upgrades it's capable of to run well.

 

Besides expanding the RAM to at least 16gb with the expansion slot as others have mentioned I would also check on your SSD. High chance it's a cheap M.2 drive without dram. Mine was actually an m.2 sata drive even and not an nvme, despite being nvme capable. Once I upgraded RAM and swapped the SSD for a good nvme drive it ran a lot better.

[jaslion]

31 minutes ago, Patbowl said:

If I do install an extra stick of ram, would that at least make the PC bearable for my wife to do her cricut projects?

 

Or is this just a loss, try to sell the PC online and go for a new one?

should be yes

 

It will still be a low end pc but it will be no longer needing to commit a heap of resources to memory management

[thevictor390]

RAM will make all the difference in the world in that PC. Selling Windows 11 on a 4 GB machine should be a crime. Really 4 GB isn't suitable for anything but Chromebook or mobile anymore.

[mMontana]

According to the page I linked above, the default should be 8.