Dell Laptop Running Extremely Slow

[Ghost Ookami]

I am running into a bit of trouble trying to troubleshoot my gf's laptop. I'm at the point where my know-how has ran out and my next step would be just be format and start fresh but I know there can be things I'm missing.

She has a Dell Precision m4600, 12g of ram, a Nvidia Quadro 1000m 2gb, and a i7 2640m

The problem is that the laptop runs extremely slow even when trying to do basic things. Opening a browser or anything can take multiple seconds to do. However when looking at its performance its hardly even being used. most of the time none of the hardware even goes higher than maybe 45% and most of the time its below 35%.

I've made sure that while trying to run games it does use the dedicated gpu but for basic operations I'm not so sure how to check. Pretty much I'm trying to figure out why its running so poorly as with the specs it has, it might not be great and it is 6ish years old, but it shouldn't chug like it is right now.

It just seems like its not even trying.

 

[webworkings]

Have you done some good deep scans for viruses and malware? Also, have you checked for what programs may be starting up when the system starts, running in the background, that don't need to be?

Also, the browser taking so long could well be the browser itself. When was the last time the cache, history, etc. for the browser were cleaned out?

 

[william p]

I am running into a bit of trouble trying to troubleshoot my gf's laptop. I'm at the point where my know-how has ran out and my next step would be just be format and start fresh but I know there can be things I'm missing.

She has a Dell Precision m4600, 12g of ram, a Nvidia Quadro 1000m 2gb, and a i7 2640m

The problem is that the laptop runs extremely slow even when trying to do basic things. Opening a browser or anything can take multiple seconds to do. However when looking at its performance its hardly even being used. most of the time none of the hardware even goes higher than maybe 45% and most of the time its below 35%.

I've made sure that while trying to run games it does use the dedicated gpu but for basic operations I'm not so sure how to check. Pretty much I'm trying to figure out why its running so poorly as with the specs it has, it might not be great and it is 6ish years old, but it shouldn't chug like it is right now.

It just seems like its not even trying.

 

[william p]

Clear out your old down load files, internet cache/history. Open task manager and see which programs are using large ammounts of RAM. Consider getting an SSD.
Run a Virus scan, malware scan, and Malwarebytes Anti Rootkit Beta (Free). It's good at finding roootkits but doesn't always clean them. I would get an SSD and do a clean install if that's the issue. Get BIOS, and driver updates from Dell Support, maybe somethings out of date.
You could run it at userbenchmark.com and see how it compared to other M4600 computers, and see what needs inprovement.
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Dell-Precision-M4600/3064
Be aware that a few of those probably have external PSU, and GPU setups that won't apply to your GF situation.
The 2000M GPU looks like s good upgrade.