Question Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series VERY slow/lags/sporadically unresponsive

[Pyremell]

I've been having this problem for over a year. My Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series laptop has been getting progressively slower to load. Also, once it does start up, everything is slow to respond to input. Opening an app, the browser, a notepad document, ect., can take up to a minute to open sometimes. Typing has a delay, as if the laptop is freezing and unfreezing randomly. Also, the hard drive sounds like it's loading nonstop, even when nothing is running and I haven't tried loading anything. Task manager shows the HDD at 100% at all times.

I've tried disabling background programs, running defrag, running disk cleanup, scanning for viruses, malware, and spyware, changing power options, updating drivers, cleaning the registry, and on and on. I've searched forums and tried every fix anyone has ever recommended, all to no avail.

The only thing I haven't done is hardware updates (changing to an SSD or M2, upgrading RAM, ect.). I don't really want to spend money to fix this, but if I can't find any other solutions, I may have to. No guarantee that will work either.

Does anybody know what I can do to make this dang laptop work? I swear I'm never buying a Dell again. Thank you!

Specs:
Intel® Core™ i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz
Radeon ™ 530
Intel® UHD Graphics 620
16 GB RAM
1TB HDD

 

[Lutfij]

When you see Task Manager show memory, CPU or disk usage or all three of them to be on 100% then you might be having a memory leak issue which is a bug in the OS since Windows 8 came to be. The solution to that is to reinstall the OS. You should fabricate your bootable USB installer using Windows Media Creation Tools.

Out of curiosity, how old is the laptop? How many partitions does the HDD have? Might want to also make sure you're on the latest BIOS update for your laptop. You should use the service tag on the underside of your laptop to find the exact model number for your laptop and a list of supported BIOS and driver options for your laptop(off of Dell's support site).

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

Task manager shows the HDD at 100% at all times.

That's likely to the cause of your laptop's poor performance. To get started, have a closer look in Task Manager and tell me what process(es) are responsible for the excessive hard-drive usage.

 

[Pyremell]

When you see Task Manager show memory, CPU or disk usage or all three of them to be on 100% then you might be having a memory leak issue which is a bug in the OS since Windows 8 came to be. The solution to that is to reinstall the OS. You should fabricate your bootable USB installer using Windows Media Creation Tools.

Out of curiosity, how old is the laptop? How many partitions does the HDD have? Might want to also make sure you're on the latest BIOS update for your laptop. You should use the service tag on the underside of your laptop to find the exact model number for your laptop and a list of supported BIOS and driver options for your laptop(off of Dell's support site).

My laptop is about 4 years old, I think. I'll check in to updating the BIOS and see if that helps, but I think your suggestion of reinstalling the OS is my best bet. I wouldn't mind doing that anyway. Maybe I can get rid of the rest of Dell's tenacious bloatware.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Pyremell]

That's likely to the cause of your laptop's poor performance. To get started, have a closer look in Task Manager and tell me what process(es) are responsible for the excessive hard-drive usage.

My top two processes are "Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry" and "System".

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

...................I think your suggestion of reinstalling the OS is my best bet. I wouldn't mind doing that anyway.

OK then.