Question Diagnosing old laptop issues

[Rena02]

Hello,

I'm trying to use an old Lenovo G50 laptop running Windows 8 but I'm finding it very slow. The laptop seems fine except that the battery is dead and will not charge at all. On start up the Windows 8 login screen will appear but if I try to login the screen will switch to Please Wait for a while before going back to the login screen and this repeats over and over.

I left the laptop alone for a few hours and I was finally able to login but I'd like to avoid waiting for who knows how long every time I turn it on.

Is there any chance that replacing the battery will fix this issue? If it's not the battery what else could be causing this?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I'm trying to use an old Lenovo G50 laptop running Windows 8 but I'm finding it very slow.
What is the SKU to your laptop? There's a sticker underneath the laptop that you can read off of.

I left the laptop alone for a few hours and I was finally able to login but I'd like to avoid waiting for who knows how long every time I turn it on.
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/Lenovo_Laptops/Lenovo_G50/Lenovo_G50_Spec.PDF
If the laptop doesn't have an SSD, then the first thing I'd have done to said laptop is reinstall the OS onto an SSD.

 

[Rena02]

I don't see the SKU number on the laptop but the drive is not a SSD. I didn't consider that the HDD might be the problem since I can open files without issues once the laptop gets going. Is there an easy way to test the health of the HDD?

 

[TerryLaze]

Hello,

I'm trying to use an old Lenovo G50 laptop running Windows 8

From the time you got it?!
Because a fresh install can do wonders.

Cpu-z can give us info on the CPU used as well as on the ram, besides the ssd those two are the main factors on slowness.
If your CPU is one of those that start with an N then that's just the speed you have to live with, they are pretty slow.

 

[Rena02]

From the time you got it?!
Because a fresh install can do wonders.

It is original, so the OS has never been reinstalled.

Cpu-z can give us info on the CPU used as well as on the ram, besides the ssd those two are the main factors on slowness.
If your CPU is one of those that start with an N then that's just the speed you have to live with, they are pretty slow.

I can look into CPU-z, but what I'm specifically concerned about is that it took many tens of minutes to hours before I could login when I first turned it on. With a HDD I'm not expecting this laptop to be very fast, but I'm surprised that it would take that long to start. I'm hoping to get it to a reasonable speed for a low spec laptop.

 

[TerryLaze]

but what I'm specifically concerned about is that it took many tens of minutes to hours before I could login when I first turned it on.

Yeah that can be because of the old install, accumulated a lot of stuff to manage.
It could also be that the hdd is starting to fail, bad sectors and such.

An old hdd on a low end CPU will take plenty of minutes to get into windows, but the loops you describe, login->please wait->login etc could be from a bad/old windows install or bad hdd.

Also if the CPU is one of the very weak ones it will take a long time to boot even with an ssd because the CPU is just so slow at doing the work needed.

 

[Rena02]

Yeah that can be because of the old install, accumulated a lot of stuff to manage.
It could also be that the hdd is starting to fail, bad sectors and such.

I see thank you that's helpful.

An old hdd on a low end CPU will take plenty of minutes to get into windows, but the loops you describe, login->please wait->login etc could be from a bad/old windows install or bad hdd.

Also if the CPU is one of the very weak ones it will take a long time to boot even with an ssd because the CPU is just so slow at doing the work needed.

The CPU is an i5 so not one of the slower ones. From everything said so far it looks like its either a HDD or OS issue. I'll look into what I need for a reinstall. I'll also try to shutdown and start the laptop one more time just in case the slow start was a fluke from not being used in a while.