A slow laptop can make daily tasks feel frustrating. Whether you’re browsing the web, typing out documents, streaming movies, or multitasking with different applications, waiting for your laptop to react can be a frustrating waste of time.
Luckily, you might not need to purchase a new laptop to address it.
Slow performance can stem from a variety of reasons including too many background programs, a nearly full storage drive, overheating, outdated software, malware, or just aging hardware. Before you spend money on a new device, consider giving these easy tips a try!
1. Restart Your Laptop The simplest solution to a slow laptop is a quick restart. Leaving your laptop on for extensive periods of time can result in the building up of background processes and temporary data, ultimately consuming system resources.
A restart will force close these processes and give Windows a clean start.
If you usually just put your laptop into Sleep mode instead of shutting down, make a habit to do a restart now and then. A reboot won’t fix every performance issue permanently, but it often does the trick for a temporarily slow machine.
2. Close Unnecessary Applications Having too many open applications at one time may consume too much RAM and processing power.
If you are running several applications that are not in use, then close them. It’s possible you have a few programs you aren’t aware are running in the background such as those from your browser, music player, editing software, messaging apps and more taking up a lot of space in your RAM. On Windows open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
You can find out which programs are using the most of the CPU and memory and close the ones you don’t need.
Exercise caution when ending tasks, and don’t close important Windows programs or processes unless you know what they’re for!
3. Disable Unnecessary Startup Applications Many programs may launch automatically every time you start up your computer. While this may be useful in some instances, it does slow down your PC during the boot-up sequence and will also contribute to performance issues when they continue to run in the background. On Windows, right click the start icon, click Task Manager and then click on the Startup tab.
Find the applications you have no need to have them automatically running onstartup and disable them (look for applications that aren’t important for Windows to run).
You should not disable programs required by Windows or necessary for some your already launched applications that the application would depend on.
4. Free Up Storage Space An almost full storage drive will make managing your laptop difficult and can also lead to slower speeds. Make sure that you have enough free space and look through the below and remove any files that you will not need; Downloads folder Temporary files Recycle Bin Old videos Duplicate files Anything in the folder C:/Users/[Your Username]/Appdata/Local/Temp or C:/Windows/Temp An application you no longer use Windows also has inbuilt storage management which can help you determine which applications are using most space.
If you’ve had some videos or photographs accumulating in your computer, you may be best to move them to either your backup storage or another location that’s off your hard drive and put them into the cloud or onto another type of disk drive.
5. Uninstall Programs You Don’t Need Over time, most laptops gather many unused programs which may or may not only hog storage but also consume the processor power, even on startup, or run processes that steal computer power resources. Navigate through the installed programs on your PC and find any you are currently not using, Uninstall them now.
However, ensure that whatever application you decide to remove the actual purpose of the program first – if it’s some sort of system utility or hardware related program you’ll probably want to remove it.
The cleaner the laptop, the easier it is to work on and the faster.
6. Keep Windows Updated Keeping outdated versions of Windows can cause compatibility and performance issues. Windows updates come with bothbug fixes and improvements that will keep your system running smoothly, it will even improve security for your machine! Go to Start Menu > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.
You may also need to consider your driver updates as well.
Most drivers, especially display and chipset drivers, play a large part in a PC’s performance. Generally it will only necessary when using drivers that support new updates and it is also safest not to install third-party driver utilities, instead try drivers from your manufacturer or elsewhere like Guru3D.
7. Check for Malware Malware or malicious programs can eat up your PC’s processing power with their processes.
Having viruses, spyware, adware or worms may very easily slow your computer down and even pose a risk to your privacy or identity! If you haven’t been monitoring your PC recently for viruses (there are tons of different programs like Avast, Malwarebytes or your in-built Windows Security Defender is sufficient as well) there’s a very high chance it will benefit from a clean-out of junk. Remember to be ware of programs like PC cleaners and Optimizer programs claiming to ‘boost your laptop to ten times faster’ which may not actually be safe or reliable at all!
8. Keep Your Laptop Cool Your laptop will throttle back to reduce temperatures when it becomes overheated.
Leaving your laptop on bed, blankets, or a sofa will block the cooling vents at the bottom of the machine and prevent proper airflow to prevent overheat! Place it on a hard, flat surface and for a bit of extra airflow place a book under one or two corners of your laptop to raise the front for air to flow under. For extra cool points use a laptop fan, these should allow the cool air from the fans into and around your PC and cool down the necessary hardware.
9. Limit Browser Tabs and Extensions Your web browser will very likely use a surprisingly large part of your system’s RAM when multiple tabs are opened.
If you feel as though your web browsing session has slowed your PC down too much then close down any superfluous windows and install a plugin if it allows you.
You really don’t need a dozen tabs open because one day you may need to have look at the pages on them. Use the bookmark feature instead and only revisit pages when necessary. If they keep accumulating maybe look into extensions that can close or suspend them.
Restarting the internet browser will also give a clean start if performance drops to much.
10. Upgrade to an SSD Traditional hard disk drive or HDD are relatively slow for the amount that they can currently offer. SSDs or Solid State Drives have considerably faster speeds of transferring information to the disk, therefore it will allow your operating system and important programs to boot up considerably quicker, thus improving your machines daily performance.
However check with your manufacturers website to see what type of SSD can be supported by your machine, especially if the laptop is older.
11. Consider Adding More RAM Your PC will likely operate best when it has enough RAM to run many different applications smoothly without slowing down. With the increasing demand for programs that can also consume large amounts of computer RAM, the lack of adequate amount of it in your pc could cause speed decreases. Again, some of these limitations can be seen with older models. Check your PC specifications before buying the extra RAM!
12. Know when it’s time to update Sometimes, a laptop becomes unbearably slow and despite attempting everything above you won’t get it any faster and will just need to accept defeat.
In some cases hardware can’t keep up with software in which case you may need to either buy more RAM, buy a new SSD or look for another laptop entirely. Despite that however, an SSD upgrade or another 4 GB stick of RAM could bring an aging laptop back from the dead without the necessity of buying a whole new laptop. But if your laptop has a large number of old specifications then it may well time to throw your laptop away.