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My Lenovo Ideapad running Windows 7 has been a nice little laptop for the past 4-5 years. But lately, I'm finding that the longer I leave it on (I put it on hibernate at night), it starts getting laggy and slow. Not only in Firefox, but in Chrome, and Word as well. This "laggy-ness," for lack of a better word, does not just apply to using the mouse, when clicking on links, opening or closing documents in word, or scrolling on a website, but to typing as well. If I restart it, the problem goes away for a while.
Any ideas as to what could cause this or suggestions on what to do are appreciated!!
When it starts getting laggy type task manager into Windows search and launch task manager. Switch to the processes tab if it's not already open. This will tell what is consuming resources, pay particular attention to the top that gives you totals for all processes.
When it starts getting laggy type task manager into Windows search and launch task manager. Switch to the processes tab if it's not already open. This will tell what is consuming resources, pay particular attention to the top that gives you totals for all processes.
Thanks.. what should I be looking for? I see a whole list of stuff on the list.. but its nothing that makes any sense to me
The top line will list CPU, RAM etc. See which one is high and then look below it to see what process is using a lot of it. If you take a screenshot and upload it someone will be able to diagnose it better.
You are missing the columns you need to see, select view, then select columns, then enable CPU usage and memory - private working set.
Then click the show processes from all users button. You can then click the column title to sort. Click the CPU column and it will sort from highest usage to lowest, then you can see what's going on.
Just from the image CPU usage is fine, memory usage isn't bad either, but you'd need to check when it's acting up.
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All those things are fine, but in my opinion (IT pro for 25 years) Windows needs a fresh installation every few years. You can try to tackle all the things going wrong with it, but I assure you there are numerous issues at hand, and a fresh install will fix all of them. While you're at it, I suggest you convert your hard drive to an SSD drive such as this one:
My mistake, my directions may seem a bit confusing because they would apply to default layout for Windows 8 and 10. The default layout for 7 is a bit different but if you follow Dave's directions it will get you there.
You are missing the columns you need to see, select view, then select columns, then enable CPU usage and memory - private working set.
Then click the show processes from all users button. You can then click the column title to sort. Click the CPU column and it will sort from highest usage to lowest, then you can see what's going on.
Just from the image CPU usage is fine, memory usage isn't bad either, but you'd need to check when it's acting up.
Thanks - I just did what you suggested- let me reply to other posts before I put up a screenshot
All those things are fine, but in my opinion (IT pro for 25 years) Windows needs a fresh installation every few years. You can try to tackle all the things going wrong with it, but I assure you there are numerous issues at hand, and a fresh install will fix all of them. While you're at it, I suggest you convert your hard drive to an SSD drive such as this one:
Also, consider upgrading to Windows 10 at the same time. You'll think you got a new laptop if you follow my advice.
Thanks... I would never trust myself to install a new hard drive.
Maybe one of the problems is I turned off the automatic updates back when they were trying to force everyone onto Windows 10. I know that was a bad decision, but I just got lazy and kept ignoring the window when it showed up.
Would it be reasonable to try to do those now and see what happens? Then if I still have problems, move to the next step which I guess would be upgrading to Windows 10. I don't know how much that costs, it might be easier/cheaper to just get a new laptop.
This problem of lagginess is really getting out of hand so I am going to have to do something.
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