Question Great New Win10 Laptop is SLOW!

[Kennybee]

I bought a nice new Dell laptop with the Core i5-8265U processor, 12 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD. Upon unboxing it, it was slow to respond changing screens. It took a really long time to install QuickBooks, like around a half hour, and when changing the default application for file extensions to LibreOffice, each extension change took about 30 seconds before the screen would respond. All the while, processor percentage of usage is 20% or less, memory usage 30% or less, hard drive usage below 50%.

I uninstalled the pre-installed McAfee Trial and installed Malwarebytes Antimalware.

One peculiar think that might have something to do with it is, in Task Manager, when in the Performance tab, it always shows in the left column for CPU as 0.40 GHz. In the upper right, it shows the CPU as 1.6 GHz and down below it shows the "Base Speed" as 1.8 GHz. But again, the processor percentage of use is under 20%, so maybe that is normal. I encountered a computer that had a similar problem like this in the past and it was caused by a recent Windows update. I searched and have not found any such complaints recently.

Any ideas? Thank you!

 

[Colif]

Have you run the dell update app on the PC and made sure you had newest drivers as you don't know how long this new PC been sitting around...

Running windows update and getting newest version of it also helps.

 

[Kennybee]

Have you run the dell update app on the PC and made sure you had newest drivers as you don't know how long this new PC been sitting around...

Running windows update and getting newest version of it also helps.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I processed all updates right away. I think the problem existed right out of the box though.

 

[Colif]

that is a strange amount of ram, 12gb... its not even got matching sticks in it. IS it supposed to have 12gb?

One peculiar think that might have something to do with it is, in Task Manager, when in the Performance tab, it always shows in the left column for CPU as 0.40 GHz. In the upper right, it shows the CPU as 1.6 GHz and down below it shows the "Base Speed" as 1.8 GHz.

CPU if its not doing anything can ramp its speed right down, so .40 might make sense for the speed of the CPU. Mine drops down toi about.87 if its at idle, but the speed figure in task manager should always be the same as the

Do dell install any diagnostic programs you can run to determine if it is ssd, knowing dell its probably the slowest ssd known to man anyway, main difference between my pc and my mums is an ssd, hers takes days to load from hdd whereas mines ready to rock in under a minute. Same CPU speed, hers is actually newer than mine.

 

[Kennybee]

How long has the laptop been working?
Try a fool's suggestion --- Clean up the computer cache, garbage, they reach a certain amount, will also affect the computer slow down.

It was straight out of the box that way. Brand spankin' new.

 

[Kennybee]

12 GB RAM was the advertised amount of RAM and that is what it shows.

 

[sizzling]

What is the cpu temperature?
Has Windows finished all updates?
Is Windows power plan set to battery saver, balanced or high performance?

 

[Kennybee]

What is the cpu temperature?
Has Windows finished all updates?
Is Windows power plan set to battery saver, balanced or high performance?

I don't know how to find the CPU temperature, but I don't expect that to be a problem. As mentioned above, all updates were performed. I had the computer plugged in, so it isn't in any type of saver mode.

 

[sizzling]

I don't know how to find the CPU temperature, but I don't expect that to be a problem. As mentioned above, all updates were performed. I had the computer plugged in, so it isn't in any type of saver mode.

Use a program like MSIAfterburner to monitor temperatures.

It’s also possible for a laptop that is plugged in to still be in battery saver mode, it is worth checking. To rule it out best to set it to high performance until you resolve this problem.