Hi people

I got what used to be a great laptop - Toshiba Sattelite P875
Windows 10 Home
64 bit
i7 2.40ghz
16GB RAM
Samsung Momentus 750 GB 2.5" Internal Hard Drive HDD 8MB cache ST750LM022 HN-M750MBB

After 7 years it has slowly wound down to a crawl.... its so slow now, even if i do something as simple as change a file name, it has to take 2 minutes to do it!!! Games that used to run on it wont even launch anymore!
I have done the virus scans
I have uninstalled unnecessary programs
I have blocked all the unnecessary processes
I have run "Driver booster"
I have even gone through the windows services list and optimized those settings according to best advice off the internet.
But nothing can change this computers mind, it is just DETERMINED to be slow.


However, now it has developed a line accross the screen. Online articles say it is the screen beginning to fail.

Ok so i will buy a new laptop then...

Now i am quite surprised to find the average laptops available for sale today are worse (on paper) than my 7 year old laptop..... what the hell happened to the laptop market??

Some possible reasons:

1. So much dust inside that CPU (and/or GPU) is throttling? Have you checked the temperatures with some HWMonitor or such utility, and have you ever opened up the case and dusted off the innards? Then again this would mainly be a problem when taxing the CPU or GPU, not merely renaming a file.

2. The hard drive may be failing. Check it with e.g. HDDScan, first checking the SMART diagnostics.

3. Last but not least, reinstall Windows 10 clean. Or "reset" it like it is apparently done today, but I'd create a Windows 10 installation media with MS Media Creator (a bootable USB stick), and install it all over. I've been eyeing for a new (budget gaming) laptop as well, and I was quite surprised about the pricing (or mainly about how much variance there is in pricing of "gaming laptops", and how there are so many ultra high price 3000-4000€ gaming laptops in the market). I paid around 1300€ for my trusty ASUS ROG gaming laptop a long time ago so I was expecting to see more in that price category, but then maybe the inflation is still a thing and prices are going up up up...

I was THIS close to buying some very high end gaming laptop from ASUS (some ASUS ROG Zephyrus something something) as one store was selling two of them for a 33% discount. The original price was a hefty 2999€ and they were selling them for 1999€. Still quite pricey... The specs were impressive though, some 6-core high end Intel CPU, Geforce 2080 Max-Q (I think that is quite the highest end mobile GPU at the moment?), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD etc...

Anyway, then I read from reviews that this is one of those "ultra-thin (gaming) notebooks" which probably partly explains the high price, and I prefer thicker gaming laptops with better ventilation (my old ASUS G75VW gaming laptop is great in that regard). Also the keyboard placing was awkward (due to the thin design, ie. the keys were not placed on top of the hot CPU nor GPU, which meant the trackpad was moved to the side and there was no numpad), and it was a 17" laptop while I'd prefer a 15" laptop.

So I saved 2000€ by not buying it.

Anyway, then I saw an Acer Predator Helios 300 which has gotten quite good reviews and considered very good value for its price. Here a version with a Nvidia 2060 GPU costs something like 1200-1300€, which sounds about the price I am ready to pay for a capable gaming laptop. I might actually buy one for those!

I MIGHT still also go for a desktop PC now that I have a monitor as well, but checking the prices, I'd have to pay around that same (1300+ €) for it as well (I guess with more power though).

Replace this slow(!) HDD with an SSD!

That doesn't explain why it has slowed down. But, slowing down might be due to failing HDD. Or the Windows just wants to be reinstalled.

It could be because of Windows/files/indexing/registry/... (no way to know from here)
I've had this in the past and formatting + reinstalling Windows usually solved it. All my PCs with SSD (since 2014 and 2016) still run as snappy as ever, without ever having Windows reinstalled.

I would also recommend a fast ssd, it’s really such an improvement over hdds.
Also, I recently had to do a reset, and I was quite impressed. Did not know that was available before. Anyways it took about an hour, restarted, went through setup (yes you could keep files, but good chance to completely clean), and there I was with a minimal fresh start. Pretty good!

Can you post a picture of it?

If that's the case (it is there no matter what's on the screen as long as it receives power), then there's very little you can do with hardware problems like this on laptops. In most cases it's cheaper (and more power efficient / less noise) to buy a new one.

All HDD's, especially the mechanical ones, have slowdowns as they get older. I personally never use old HDD's past the 5 years mark as primary storage banks, as the amount of slowdowns/failures/corruptions seriously increases the older they get (by then I often use them as replacements for these slow USB flash drives). You should never trust or use HDD's continuously for that long anyway.

EDIT: The Momentus is only a 5400 RPM drive and is known for being slow, so you really should get rid of it :D They have become progressively worse in many cases, but these new Ryzen laptops seems to have changed that...

Laptops are far better today than ever before (well, as of a few months ago). Right now, Chinese shortages may be affecting the market. I haven't looked closely, but the shortages are coming if they're not here.

Intel has a major shortage right now. Give them another year. Until then, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck with Ryzen.

The newest Ryzen 5 will benchmark around where your old i7 benchmarked when it was new.

As others said, if you want to fix it it up, you can clean it, get a a good SSD (your hdd is a bad, bad one). You can likely get your display or display canoe replaced to fix the line .

All that said, 7 years of beyond most laptops' life. It may just be time to get a new one.

Now that everyone uses a computer (rather than just hobbyists or "professional" workers), the focus is shifted to who will buy more. Most people will choose price over quality, so they flood the market with low-end systems and then rotate which models are on sale.

You have to remember, the average person doesn't know what any of the components are/do, so they rely only the name brand and the price.

With windows it seems every 3-4 years it eneds to be reinstalled or cleaned out really well.

Of course it could always be a recent update. I know apple does that where they update the OS and then it runs at crap speeds, to coax you to get a new phone. After Microsofts Malware upgrades to force you to 10, i wouldn't put anything past them.

Yes, it used to be once a year it was beneficial to reinstall windows from scratch. Back then it wasn’t possible to keep a clean install, registry would get full up, disks fragment, uninstalls left loads of bits left over etc. All combines to a slow down, even with good practices. Win 10 is better, but still has a lot of these issues, the addition of a reset is good though.
In terms of M$ practices, I don’t believe they are any worse than any other company, in most cases they just follow what others are doing. All tech companies are bad, scale is hard to judge.

Pretty much this! Most likely your HHD is failing, if you backup files at this moment it will probably fail and not boot anymore.
Windows 10 is very harsh on storage...

The line developed on the screen is usually a screen or GPU malfunction, it by any chance the problem lies on the screen cable, the the repair maybe worth it... But most of the times the problem is a sign of overheated and dying GPU...

As previous recomendations a SSD is a must nowdays but both the SSD and the screen problem might not worth the repair

Laptops are quite good price now (and desktops kinda expensive), if your i7 is a dual core you'll get quite a bump in performance! Check carefully as there are many older models still on the market...

Thanks for all the help to all above!

Its funny, i always get that thought in the back of my mind that this computer is being slow just to annoy me! lol

Its actually a work laptop, and is on every workday all day.

Yesterday i was putting together a big legal case (i am not a lawyer - i am that guy in the office that does everything! lol).... and 4 hours in the laptop suddenly started refusing to save files. I would do the normal 'save as' then expect the save box to popup.... nothing, repeat several times..... nothing. Ok time to try CNTRL ALT DELETE.....again nothing, so i had to do a hard restart and lost all my work..... that was the last straw!

My boss told me to go buy a new laptop,

So, i found this one at JB HiFI = Acer Nitro 5 AN515-43 15.6 for $1599.00 (AUD)

Key Features

15.6" Full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS LED LCD screen

AMD Ryzen™ 5 3550H processor (4-Core, 4M Cache, up to 3.7 GHz)

16GB RAM

512GB PCIe NVMe SSD

AMD Radeon RX 560X Graphics (4GB)

802.11 ac

Backlit Keyboard (Red)

HD CAM with Digital Mic

Up to 6 Hours Battery Life

1 x USB 3.1 Type C (Gen 1)

2 x USB 3.0

1 x USB 2.0

1 x HDMI

Windows 10 Home

Should i buy it?

here is a simple idea to test a few things.

make a linux usb boot stick. try that with some things online (such as watching HD video on youtube).

are you then still getting the same slowdowns?

if not its either OS or HD based.

If you are, then its other hardware / the laptop in general.

Edit: nvm, didnt see your last post about work laptop until i posted this. Still, a generally good troubleshooting step if you can manage it for anybody stumbling on this thread in the future.

Also, for anyone that is interested, on the old laptop i noticed a suspicious service;

Display name: Clipboard User Service_9df443
Service name: cbdhsvc_9df443

Usually when i google a service, i get plenty of info come up, this one almost gets nothing come up on it?

Edit: What i mean is, If i do an 'exact' name google search, i get ZERO results..... first time that has ever happened for a windows service?