Laptop Issues - Currys PC World

PauloConn

My wife purchased a laptop from PC last September. She was looking for something standard enough, primarily for browsing the web. She uses it intermittently and recently the performance of it is atrociious. It takes 15 minutes to open up, opening hotmail takes as long.
We bought McAfee antivrus with the laptop at the time of purchase and i made sure this was installed.
She has a proof of puchase for it and it feels like the model they sold us wasnt' what we expected. It's an absolute brute to use now.
If i look to bring it back to exchange, am i likely to get pushback. 6 months doesn't seem like a long time for something she paid almost 500 quid for.

thanks
P

9935452

If it has only recently starting to run slow. It's got a virus or malware.
It could also be a problem with your Internet connection or how it's connected to the net.

Have you installed updates for the anti virus . Also is there a firewall in place and working .

It's six months old . They won't let you return it. The best they will do is run a virus scanner or malware scanner and remove the problem. .
They will probably charge you for this though.

Xterminator

Hi Op

your laptop warranty covers the hardware. If your laptop hardware has a fault you would be covered.

however nothing in your post above indicates it is a hardware issue, and as the previous poster has said, it is most likely not hardware, but software. Currys can run checks to confirm this. it it is not covered you would expect a fee to resolve.

However i would personally not bring it to them as a 1st port of call. If you have a techie mate, or family member they can sweep for viruses and establish if there are any obvious issues. When you know a bit more, you can make a decision on what to do.

goodlad

Whats the model number/spec of the laptop?
Do you know anyone with IT knowledge that can look at the laptop for you?

Go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and post the results. That will help determin if maybe its an internet connection issue.

PauloConn

Thanks folks

will run those tests and send an update.
I don't think its a malware, as i mentioned, i have had the McAfee antivirus and firewall installed since it was purchased. It never ran exceptionally quickly and my wife uses it maybe once a month so she hasn't had a consistent run of it working well.

meep

If you use it infrequently, it's entirely possible that it's running standard windows updates which have backed up.

On low spec machines, I've found these can max out the hard drive throughput and slow everything down significantly.

Have you tried leaving it running for a while ( a few hours or even a full day) to allow it do it's stuff and then rebooting it (shutdown / restart)?

beauf

PauloConn wrote: »

.... recently the performance of it is atrociious. It takes 15 minutes to open up, ...

Probably just needs optimizing and cleaning up. Windows 10 really needs a SSD.

TerrorFirmer

It's probably a certain combination of factors such as a really low end laptop, install full of bloatware, slow hard drive, etc. But that does sound intolerably bad, my 'work' laptop is some crappy dual core celeron and 2GB ram on Win10 and although it's not brilliant, it's decent enough for meetings, typing, single/dual tab browsing, etc.

But my first port of call would be find a friend who can just reinstall Win10 for you via USB (Would be fully done in an hour, Win10 automatically installs all drivers - maybe don't do a restore from partition as the original OS install is probably full of garbage).

rock22

PauloConn wrote: »

Thanks folks

will run those tests and send an update.
I don't think its a malware, as i mentioned, i have had the McAfee antivirus and firewall installed since it was purchased. It never ran exceptionally quickly and my wife uses it maybe once a month so she hasn't had a consistent run of it working well.

As 'meep' has said above, this is almost certainly, Windows trying to catch up on a backlog of updates. Even on a reasonably fast laptop , windows can take over for hours on some updates is not used for a while. Leaving for a whole month will definitely cause problems

Leave the Laptop on for a few days and see if problem sorts itself out

tedpan

PauloConn wrote:

will run those tests and send an update. I don't think its a malware, as i mentioned, i have had the McAfee antivirus and firewall installed since it was purchased. It never ran exceptionally quickly and my wife uses it maybe once a month so she hasn't had a consistent run of it working well.

Lol, McAfee does not cover malware. It's also one of the worst antivirus, similar to Norton(slowing down your machine etc). I'd recommend removing McAfee completely, run malwarebytes and just use the integrated windows defender within windows 10.

tedpan

TerrorFirmer wrote:

But my first port of call would be find a friend who can just reinstall Win10 for you via USB (Would be fully done in an hour, Win10 automatically installs all drivers - maybe don't do a restore from partition as the original OS install is probably full of garbage).

You can simply reset windows 10 to factory by typing "reset" then either select remove or keep files. That takes 30 mins(SSD) or several hours dependant on your HDD.

The OP may also have an issue with their hard drive if things are painfully slow.

beauf

My netbook took a whole day to upgrade to do the creator update.

PauloConn

Thanks everyone, i hadn't considered the lack of use would be a cause, it makes sense though.
I will kick off letting it run overnight and see if the updates all go on.
Watch this space

coylemj

PauloConn wrote: »

Thanks everyone, i hadn't considered the lack of use would be a cause, it makes sense though.
I will kick off letting it run overnight and see if the updates all go on.
Watch this space

Keep an eye on it in case it wants a reboot or asks a question like 'are you sure you want to install this update'? It may require more than one reboot if there's a firmware or h/w driver update involved so be sure to check the progress every couple of hours and before you leave it run overnight.

Nothing worse than starting what you think is a long update process, only to discover after several hours that it stalled after 5 minutes for want of someone pressing an 'OK' button to proceed.

PauloConn

Finally opened up the laptop last night, loads of updates, ran it overnight, started the restart this morning on the way out the door.
Need to run a few other tests this evening if its finished iwth all the patches.
thanks again for the help on this. Very frustrating working with a laptop that crawls along

PauloConn

goodlad wrote: »

Whats the model number/spec of the laptop?
Do you know anyone with IT knowledge that can look at the laptop for you?

Go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and post the results. That will help determin if maybe its an internet connection issue.

PauloConn

For some reason the download is lower than the upload??? i can get about 236mb download on the phone and 24 upload. is that the wireless card in the machine?

PauloConn

Ran malwarebytes and no issues detected. just needed a good reboot.
are there any programs that identify all the junk running in the background. there looks to be loads of these lenovo apps and also windows edge which i can't uninstall