Forum menu
Our new (outlet store reconditioned) Dell laptop was very slow out of the box. I've just spent 90mins on the phone to a chap from Dell who was very nice, but I'm not too sure he's fixed it. I'm gonna monitor it for 24hrs & he's calling back.
Use Process Monitor to find out 🙂
PS: - i may not understand your answers. Laymans terms please! 😉
Check to see if you are using 'StorAHCI.sys'
This has solved the issue on a couple of laptops for me
edit (both laptops were also Dell)
Microsoft updates - new machines aren't upto date, so the thing is probably running round getting updates.
It's a bit like when all the kids get their mew Playstation or Xbox on Christmas day, and they have to update, but are usually let down by the servers due to demand.
Process Monitor will do it, but it's a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut innit?
Easier just to open Resource Monitor, scroll down to Disk and click on 'Total B/sec' to sort by the total. Whatever is at the top is your likely cause.
As someone mentioned, most likely it is putting on a trillion windows or .net updates in the background. Pain in the chebs on a system with a disk. Took nearly two days of churning to get them all in on a new laptop I set up for someone.
I had this on a Dell laptop. Google it, there's loads of different reasons. Nothing I tried fixed it, until I wiped the hardrive and did a totally fresh install of Windows 10 (clean, not a Dell version with crapware included).
Problem has gone, and computer is now usuable. Wish I hadn't put up with it for 2 years before finally wiling and starting afresh...
Loads of reasons, it can be a nightmare to fix. First pory of call is to let it update as much as possible then hit Google and start turning off services.
Ye should have stuck and SSD in there though, doesn't happen with those. (Unless you're about to tell me different!)
Few things:
Win 10 is ‘sneaky’. It will run updates in the background without notice, if you’ve got a early version of W10 you’ve got dozens of minor updates, hundreds of security patches and 2 major feature updates. Check by pressing the windows key and typing ‘updates’ top option should be “check for updates” this willnlet you know if it’s updating.
The second sneaky thing is does is pretending it’s booted when it hasn’t. Even on a mechanical drove it will get to the desktop in a minute or two, but it’s next to useless for 10 mins (again on hdd not ssd) whilst it does this it will show 100% disc use.
A fresh build is a good idea, you can do it within Windows now.
Windows 10 also will update its cache of things in the background and this can last longer while it first indexes everything. e.g. the search and photo gallery indexing.
If it seems to drop when you actually use it but is 100% when not, that's probably it.
Dell have their own health check software also and that may be doing stuff trashing discs, CPU and memory.
Ye should have stuck and SSD in there though, doesn’t happen with those. (Unless you’re about to tell me different!)
Still does, it's just SSDs are a lot more responsive so "disc" activity can be far less noticeable, though you can still max out SSD activity. You want to keep an eye on it as SSDs have a finite read/write life, though many have clever stuff to distribute the wear and an allocated space to allow for reallocation of bad memory.
How is it running now - the updates are a mare on a new machine.
You can swap an SSD in anytime if you want the instant speed boost and a simple caddy and free software will give you a spare HD.