New Toshiba laptop very slow

HeidiHeidi

Hoping someone might be able to advise here.....

I bought a new Toshiba satellite laptop about 6 or 8 months ago, and right from the off it's been annoyingly slow. I previously had an Acer and it was (in hindsight) brilliant, but the screen died.

This new one hangs a lot. Takes aaaages to load pages. Frequently just freezes for minutes at a time. Even to turn off, there might be a ten second lag between pressing the bottom left button and the power options popping up (that sounds not so bad when I write it but it drives me NUTS!)

Trouble is, I don't know what's causing the slowdowns and they don't happen all the time. Just a lot of the time.

I haven't installed loads of stuff on it, and only use it for browsing and documents.

I've AVG Free installed and availed of a free trial if their "pc tune up", but that didn't make much difference.

The guy I bought it from (a small independent, not a chain store) sort of vaguely offered to have a look but didn't sound very interested when i had it back with him for something else, and I can't actually point at anything and say "THAT" is wrong.

I just feel that a new laptop that I spent 400 quid on should perform a lot better than this one is.

Is there any way of finding out what night be causing the slowness/lag? I have a Samsung tablet that's as sharp as a pin so it's not my broadband.

Apologies for the vague description and question, I'm hopeless st this tech stuff and really hope someone might advise me what to do.

Thanks!

beauf

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-windows-10-task-manager-monitor-system-performance

Usually its you have a slow hard drive or eMMC. Get a SSD if the laptop can take it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/196541/emmc-vs.-ssd-not-all-solid-state-storage-is-equal/

Whats the model no and spec.

https://www.piriform.com/speccy

HeidiHeidi

beauf wrote: »

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-windows-10-task-manager-monitor-system-performance

Usually its you have a slow hard drive or eMMC. Get a SSD if the laptop can take it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/196541/emmc-vs.-ssd-not-all-solid-state-storage-is-equal/

Whats the model no and spec.

https://www.piriform.com/speccy

I have only the vaguest idea of what any of that means I'm afraid.

I'm away from the laptop at the moment but will go through those tomorrow and see if I can make any sense of them. I'll also post model no.

Thanks!

Just wondering, should a "good" laptop (which I was assured this one was - I know, I know!) need supplementing or upgrading so early on? If it was 5 years old I'd understand slowing down.. But from brand new?

beauf

A Cheap laptop is under 500.

A mid range is 500~1000

and expensive is 1000~3000

HeidiHeidi

beauf wrote: »

A Cheap laptop is under 500.

A mid range is 500~1000

and expensive is 1000~3000

Right so.....

:eek:

beauf

That said I used a couple of 10yr old laptops for light browsing and office stuff quite happily. They all have SSDs though. I also use a €150 netbook for really simple tasks.

theteal

Yeah we've no way of knowing how good it is until you can let us know the model. I've seen some ok-ish laptops for €400 but I've also seen some absolute turds for similar prices in the last while. There's a lot more value to be had I n the 2nd hand market but that info is not much use to you now

HeidiHeidi

beauf wrote: »

That said I used a couple of 10yr old laptops for light browsing and office stuff quite happily. They all have SSDs though. I also use a €150 netbook for really simple tasks.

Yeah the Acer was probably heading for 10 years old but was FAR better than this new one - until the screen packed up. And the battery was completely shot.

But performance wise there was no comparison. From the price I thought the Toshiba would be in the same ballpark.

Atlantic Dawn

How much RAM has the laptop? Adding RAM can speed things up but the best performance increase is to add a SSD, boots up in seconds.

beauf

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

...But performance wise there was no comparison. From the price I thought the Toshiba would be in the same ballpark.

My 10yr old laptop is faster than many of the cheap laptops sold today.

HeidiHeidi

theteal wrote: »

Yeah we've no way of knowing how good it is until you can let us know the model. I've seen some ok-ish laptops for €400 but I've also seen some absolute turds for similar prices in the last while. There's a lot more value to be had I n the 2nd hand market but that info is not much use to you now

I know where to go for advice next time then!

I thought I was doing the right thing going to this indie guy rather than a big chain - they've done repairs for me before, and for colleagues, and are decent guys who've never let us down. I'd hate to think he knowingly sold me a dud.

HeidiHeidi

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

How much RAM has the laptop? Adding RAM can speed things up but the best performance increase is to add a SSD, boots up in seconds.

How would I tell?

I'll post model and whatever other details I can tomorrow.

The most important spec you have mentioned is 400.00Euros

What kind of performance are you expecting for 400.00Euros?

Atlantic Dawn

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

How would I tell?

I'll post model and whatever other details I can tomorrow.

Right click on the Windows start button in the bottom left and select System, the Device Specifications will list installed RAM.

beauf

Some new laptops are not fast but they have like 10 hours of battery life. They are designed to be good at that.

HeidiHeidi

Deleted User wrote: »

The most important spec you have mentioned is 400.00euros

To be fair I wasn't looking for super dooper spec, just a basic laptop for browsing and documents.

What I got was something that reminds me of the dial-up days, that is incredibly frustrating to use.

I'm just trying to figure out if I can find out what the problem is. I find it hard to imagine that it's actually designed to work this badly.

HeidiHeidi

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

To be fair I wasn't looking for super dooper spec, just a basic laptop for browsing and documents.

What I got was something that reminds me of the dial-up days, that is incredibly frustrating to use.

I'm just trying to figure out if I can find out what the problem is. I find it hard to imagine that it's actually designed to work this badly.

It just sounds like you got what you paid for. If you’re not happy I’d sell it and move on

theteal

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

I know where to go for advice next time then!

I thought I was doing the right thing going to this indie guy rather than a big chain - they've done repairs for me before, and for colleagues, and are decent guys who've never let us down. I'd hate to think he knowingly sold me a dud.

The bigger chains can work off smaller profit margins. I just can't see that youd get that much of a bargain on a new sealed machine from an indie - I could be wrong. Anyway not to panic, all these things are fixable

HeidiHeidi

beauf wrote: »

Some new laptops are not fast but they have like 10 hours of battery life. They are designed to be good at that.

It has maybe 4 or 5 hours battery life. So good but not incredible.

It's not that it's just slow - it hangs and freezes a lot and the odd time I've had to force close it down as I cannot even get ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager.

HeidiHeidi

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

It has maybe 4 or 5 hours battery life. So good but not incredible.

It's not that it's just slow - it hangs and freezes a lot and the odd time I've had to force close it down as I cannot even get ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager.

4 to 5 hours is fairly decent in fairness

HeidiHeidi

Deleted User wrote: »

4 to 5 hours is fairly decent in fairness

Battery life is the least of my concerns!

Suckit

Try to remove bloatware https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ and run a scan using your browser on PC Pitstop. It is not ideal but should be able to tell you what is slowing it down. http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/
Run your browser as administrator, you do not need to create an account.

You could also try Aida64 https://www.aida64.com/downloads but should not be necessary if you have scanned with PCPitstop tools.

Download CCleaner and go to Startup programs and Untick everything. Restart PC and see if it is still slow.

A PC 6-8 months old should not be as slow as you describe it. Even if it is under €200. It should run with modern software, unless you have installed something that is a resource hog on it (or unless it came pre-installed.).

You could also download Rufus or Etcher (or a million other tools) and try installing Ubuntu (I chose that because it is not a slimmed version) from here - https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

This may seem like a lot to do, but if you do it in order, it really is not. Rufus or Etcher are very simple to use. I am not sure whether or not you will like Ubuntu, but you do not have to install it, You only need to boot from USB and see if your PC is still slow running Firefox and opening office documents etc.. https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1013017/

If you are using Steam or similar, that will slow down PC also.

Then we can check if you have Malware (which is likely) but not until after determining whether or not you have decent basic hardware

HeidiHeidi

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

Battery life is the least of my concerns!

I can imagine
What you have described sounds very frustrating
I think it’d probably be a waste of money paying someone to have a look at it
Bring it back to the shop, ask him what he thinks and go from there

HeidiHeidi

Despite numerous attempts I cannot for the life of me upload a pic of the spec of the computer :mad:

Installed RAM 4.00GB
Processor Intel Pentium CPU N3700 A 1.60GHz
Device Name Laptop H5ENLM0B
System type 64-bit operating system

I think these are the useful bits of info.

Thanks everyone for the help so far!

ETA - I'm waiting half the day for a live chat for a totally different (non-laptop) problem - after that I'll start working through the tests/solutions recommended above

theteal

OK, the processor is not great, to say the least.
Is there an extra Ram slot?
In your shoes, i'd buy a SSD, double the RAM and do a clean install of Windows - if not a less heavy duty OS.

Not much else you can do, really.




EDIT - I'm guessing it's something like this. These seem to be end of life everywhere I can find them. It's old stock unfortunately. Anyway, do the above and it'll be usable

HeidiHeidi

theteal wrote: »

OK, the processor is not great, to say the least.
Is there an extra Ram slot?
In your shoes, i'd buy a SSD, double the RAM and do a clean install of Windows - if not a less heavy duty OS.

Not much else you can do, really.




EDIT - I'm guessing it's something like this. These seem to be end of life everywhere I can find them. It's old stock unfortunately. Anyway, do the above and it'll be usable

That's the one. Hmmm. Looks like I got done, going by that price.

Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.

Alanstrainor

A decent SSD will be 80 euro or so for 256GB of storage. The RAM should cost another 50 or 60.

But honestly, before you start looking to spend money you need to give this machine it's best chance.

Open task manager (right click on the task bar and select from there). There's a tab in task manager called start-up. Click on it. Now look at the applications in here, ideally you should disable most of them. These are applications that start and bog down your computer when you turn it on.

You should consider uninstalling unused programs that might be harming performance too. Are there games installed you don't use? Is there some other anti-virus installed? Microsoft has included protection with Windows 10 so I would recommend removing McAfee or similar if it is installed.

All these things will help, it just depends on how much.

DopeTech

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

That's the one. Hmmm. Looks like I got done, going by that price.

Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.

Depends what size SSD you want. They are more expensive than old HDDs but offer much better performance. Memory is relatively cheap. A clean install of windows 10 would help too to remove any bloatware that came with it. I found Avast made windows 10 sluggish the last time I used it. Those pc tune up apps can also impact performance rather than improve it alot of the time.

jhud

You have to make sure you have only one antivirus(av) having 2 can really cripple even a high end machine. So if using Avg make sure McAfee or norton or the likes is not installed this would need to be removed\uninstalled. But same as other advice computer will be slow but reducing startup apps and doing this can save you buying the upgrade but to be honest windows is just ok on 4gb really needs 6-8gb and hard drive will be slow ssd hard drive will really improve things on this.

beauf

I'm using 3 laptops with similar CPU performance, one with 3GB and two with 2GB. The big difference is the hard drive. All mine have a SSD or a eMMC the latter is a good bit slower. All are a lot faster then a hard drive. Windows 10 hammers a hard drive and a regular drive is just too slow anymore except for storage. 4GB is plenty of ram for basic tasks. I have another with 4GB and I never need more than that. Though if I was buying a new machine I'd try to get 8GB, just for future proofing.

You need a SSD. End of story.

beauf

HeidiHeidi wrote: »

...Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.

Its not that bad....