Laptop slow even after formatting

[CesarDani]

So, this is a little weird. The laptop was running fine until a Win11 update but then it started being SUPER slow for everything, even minor tasks as opening the files explorer take a long time now.

 

At first I thought faulty disk as I had seen something similar before but lo and behold it seems... mostly fine? https://imgur.com/a/3v1bAuZ

 

I noticed however that the cpu is clocked at 1.60GHz, which seemed weird at first until googling and checking that that's actually that cpu's base clock speed. Max 2.11Ghz seems weird though considering everything online said 4.20Ghz though, could that be the issue? https://imgur.com/a/t944oM8

 

Things I've done to check if it would fix things to no avail:

*Ran sfc /scannow

*Ran chkdsk /f /r

*Uninstalled Java Runtime because I saw someone mentioning it online but that didn't do anything

*Deleted temp files

 

Specs:

512 GB M.2 SSD that's only like 10% full

8 gb ram i5 10210u

Intel uhd 630 graphics

 

Any help is really appreciated, don't know what to do anymore :(

[BiotechBen]

7 minutes ago, CesarDani said:

So, this is a little weird. The laptop was running fine until a Win11 update but then it started being SUPER slow for everything, even minor tasks as opening the files explorer take a long time now.

 

At first I thought faulty disk as I had seen something similar before but lo and behold it seems... mostly fine? https://imgur.com/a/3v1bAuZ

 

I noticed however that the cpu is clocked at 1.60GHz, which seemed weird at first until googling and checking that that's actually that cpu's base clock speed. Max 2.11Ghz seems weird though considering everything online said 4.20Ghz though, could that be the issue? https://imgur.com/a/t944oM8

 

Things I've done to check if it would fix things to no avail:

*Ran sfc /scannow

*Ran chkdsk /f /r

*Uninstalled Java Runtime because I saw someone mentioning it online but that didn't do anything

*Deleted temp files

 

Specs:

512 GB M.2 SSD that's only like 10% full

8 gb ram i5 10210u

Intel uhd 630 graphics

 

Any help is really appreciated, don't know what to do anymore

Is that a single 8gb stick or 2x4gb?

[CesarDani]

19 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

Is that a single 8gb stick or 2x4gb?

It's one stick afaik

[BiotechBen]

3 minutes ago, CesarDani said:

It's one stick afaik

That can definitely hurt performance. Especially given the low spec chip. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

I'd be curious to see crystaldiskmark speed tests to see if the drive's doing the speeds it should. I had a drive go all weird on me and run really slow and it showed up in crystaldiskmark.

The other thing I'd check for is if the battery is charging. Some laptops will disable charging and throttle back performance severely if they don't detect a sufficient charger connected.

 

Try opening task manager and see what the CPU's clockspeed looks like in real time. I'd expect it to turbo pretty quickly when you try to open programs and whatnot. If it's stuck st a low clockspeed, it might be a missing power management driver (unlikely) or the power management circuitry/firmware may not be allowing it to run at full power.

 

If everything else checks out, you might want to try updating the machine's BIOS. 

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, CesarDani said:

I noticed however that the cpu is clocked at 1.60GHz, which seemed weird at first until googling and checking that that's actually that cpu's base clock speed. Max 2.11Ghz seems weird though considering everything online said 4.20Ghz though, could that be the issue? https://imgur.com/a/t944oM8

Did you check on ark intel? And did you read it fully?
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/195436/intel-core-i5-10210u-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html

 

So no, that isn't the issue. It should actually help you get more performance out of it.

 

1 hour ago, CesarDani said:

The laptop was running fine until a Win11 update but then it started being SUPER slow for everything, even minor tasks as opening the files explorer take a long time now.

Is the update actually done installing?
I hate how Microsoft handles these updates nowadays, I would turn on my laptop after an update, go make some coffee, and come back to my laptop doing "nothing" (just my desktop, signed in) but the fans screaming at max RPM, opening up task manager shows it is still installing something in the background.

Another thing that might slow things down to a crawl is if you are running out of RAM... paging even to an SSD is orders of magnitude slower than RAM.

Anyhow you need to do more testing / troubleshooting.
Start by opening up your task manager and checking your resource usage.
Next I suggest installing HWiNFO and checking what is the actual max frequency your CPU is hitting, while under load!
Like @iamdarkyoshi said it is possible that the update borked a driver or power management and left your CPU in some sort of limp mode. 

[CesarDani]

12 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Did you check on ark intel? And did you read it fully?
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/195436/intel-core-i5-10210u-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html

 

So no, that isn't the issue. It should actually help you get more performance out of it.

 

Is the update actually done installing?
I hate how Microsoft handles these updates nowadays, I would turn on my laptop after an update, go make some coffee, and come back to my laptop doing "nothing" (just my desktop, signed in) but the fans screaming at max RPM, opening up task manager shows it is still installing something in the background.

Another thing that might slow things down to a crawl is if you are running out of RAM... paging even to an SSD is orders of magnitude slower than RAM.

Anyhow you need to do more testing / troubleshooting.
Start by opening up your task manager and checking your resource usage.
Next I suggest installing HWiNFO and checking what is the actual max frequency your CPU is hitting, while under load!
Like @iamdarkyoshi said it is possible that the update borked a driver or power management and left your CPU in some sort of limp mode. 

How could I check if a power driver is dead? I've formatted the laptop to go from win11 to win10 and then back to win11 so you'd imagine it should've installed properly at least once if that was the case, but it was always slow

12 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

I'd be curious to see crystaldiskmark speed tests to see if the drive's doing the speeds it should. I had a drive go all weird on me and run really slow and it showed up in crystaldiskmark.

The other thing I'd check for is if the battery is charging. Some laptops will disable charging and throttle back performance severely if they don't detect a sufficient charger connected.

 

Try opening task manager and see what the CPU's clockspeed looks like in real time. I'd expect it to turbo pretty quickly when you try to open programs and whatnot. If it's stuck st a low clockspeed, it might be a missing power management driver (unlikely) or the power management circuitry/firmware may not be allowing it to run at full power.

 

If everything else checks out, you might want to try updating the machine's BIOS. 

This looks... bad right?

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

How could I check if a power driver is dead? I've formatted the laptop to go from win11 to win10 and then back to win11 so you'd imagine it should've installed properly at least once if that was the case, but it was always slow

I told you one way of checking it:

13 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Next I suggest installing HWiNFO and checking what is the actual max frequency your CPU is hitting, while under load!

Run something CPU intensive and see what your core frequiencies are.

 

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

This looks... bad right?

Random (4K) read/writes are slow... but I'm pretty sure you didn't pick the right setting for the test.

You should have picked "NVMe SSD", not "Default".

 

[CesarDani]

3 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

I told you one way of checking it:

Run something CPU intensive and see what your core frequiencies are.

 

Random (4K) read/writes are slow... but I'm pretty sure you didn't pick the right setting for the test.

You should have picked "NVMe SSD", not "Default".

 

I did the cpu tests, and you were right! There is something crippling the cpu usage of the computer. It's not getting to even 1ghz under medium load (two instances of chrome open, running videos at the same time + sharing screen via chrome remote desktop)

 

Not much idea of how to read individual core performance and couldn't really find a way to see the frequencies being ran here, so I moved to task manager and found that.

 

Also the ram was operating at really low clock speeds, but I'm clueless as to what that might mean

[Biohazard777]

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

I did the cpu tests, and you were right! There is something crippling the cpu usage of the computer. It's not getting to even 1ghz under medium load (two instances of chrome open, running videos at the same time + sharing screen via chrome remote desktop)

Your CPU is fairly modern, meaning your CPU has hardware accelerated video encode / decode for most video codecs.
That means playing back video and even sharing your screen would be offloaded from your CPU (you won't see much CPU usage).
A test that would fully utilize your CPU would be something like Prime95 , or if you have AIDA64 -> System Stability Test (Stress: CPU, FPU, Cache, System Memory).

Anyways, just opening a browser should be enough to wake your CPU and turbo it (go for highest clocks) for a short period of time.

 

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

Not much idea of how to read individual core performance and couldn't really find a way to see the frequencies being ran here, so I moved to task manager and found that.

Open up sensors, CPU #0 should be near the top, on the laptop I am currently on:

This on a Ryzen powered laptop, wording and exact position might be different for you.
It might look something more like this:

What you are looking for is Core 0 Clock, Core 1 Clock and so on.
Specifically you are interested in the Maximum column, does it ever boost to ~4GHz as it should be able to?

 

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

C-States are power saving modes, they help prolong your battery life / reduce electricity consumption when the laptop is idle.
The higher the C <number> state = less power drawn.
Anyhow C-States are irrelevant for the problem at hand so lets move on.

 

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

Also the ram was operating at really low clock speeds, but I'm clueless as to what that might mean

That looks normal.
DDR = Double Data RAM.

1200 x 2 = 2400 MT/s , which is typical DDR4 speeds for business / office laptops...

Some programs show you the calculated MT/s while others (like CPU-Z) leave it to you to factor that in.

Huawei is just copying Apple aesthetics and showing in mediocre components you'll find in any other business/office laptop (like the ones from Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc.), while charging you a premium for the looks... I wouldn't be surprised at all if they are using 2400 MT/s RAM for your laptop model.

 

 

2 hours ago, CesarDani said:

I did the cpu tests, and you were right! There is something crippling the cpu usage of the computer. It's not getting to even 1ghz under medium load (two instances of chrome open, running videos at the same time + sharing screen via chrome remote desktop)

Finally back to the issue at hand.
If under load it should at the very least be at base clock (for your laptop 1.6 or 2.1GHz if Huawei allowed higher TDP-UP base frequency), or better yet it should be boosting (going above that, up to ~4GHz).
You might find the reason why it is doing that (limping between 0.4 and 1GHz) in HWiNFO,
under CPU #0 <Name of the CPU> Enhanced section of the Sensors tab, should look something like this:

Also check your temperatures while you are there (also under Enhanced)
 

In any case I suggest going to the manufacturers website (Huawei) and download all the drivers for your model, install them and then reboot and check again.