Fix laptop

[SHNAGFNAY]

So I have this laptop that I have tried to fix and get working. The windows system was slow with window boxes frozen etc. at startup, and the file system had turned to some foreign language (not the menus). Very strange! Somehow I managed to create another user profile and log in between them and managed to make an full recovery, downloading windows 10. That was some half year ago, the laptop was bought in early 2017, it is an Acer Swift sf114-31-c9sb mfg. (edit) PS. But it slowed down some years ago.

My goal has been to manage to connect Bluetooth and listen to music since the Bluetooth wouldn't find my headphones and only list unknown devices. But today I turned on the laptop once more and to my surprise Bluetooth now works and I listened to music.

But the computer is very slow but the mouse and moving windows boxes around is very fast. The CPU runs at 100% so I think it is the CPU that is spooking, or can it be something else? I am not sure. It is loading slow inside applications and two or more tasks is slowing the laptop down considerably.

My idea now is to find a new CPU for it but searching the web I read that it may not be possible. That the CPU is welded into the laptop or something.

Any ideas?

 

[ziutek]

Hi Snagfnie.
I had similar problems with my laptop.
It is true that it is difficult to replace components because they are integrated into the motherboard in most cases and it is a very expensive process.
However, in my case, restoring to factory settings helped. Of course, before that I copied the necessary things to an external drive.
After a few years of operation, willy-nilly, cookies and other files are installed from the network, which working in the background slow down the hardware.
I hope this will help you.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[Ca.]

FWIW.. CCleaner for the basic model (which may untangle some of the cobwebs in a PC).



Fixing bugs

• In Health Check, we fixed version information not showing for software updates
• In Driver Updater, we fixed crashes that could occur during an update or when closing CCleaner
• In Software Updater, we fixed Google Drive showing "Unknown publisher"

 

[RedFox]

I'd second CCleaner - if the CPU is at 100% all the time, some piece of software is causing issues.
Found this with a quick search - I'd skip step 0 though (and step 3, if you don't know what you're doing), unless nothing else works.

Win10 for Slow PCs | https://git.io/boost-win10 | by https://git.io/ilyaigpetrov

Win10 for Slow PCs | https://git.io/boost-win10 | by https://git.io/ilyaigpetrov - Tuning Windows 10 for Slow Machines.md

gist.github.com

 

[ToxicCoward]

I don't recommend CCleaner or any registry clean tools (or at least not feature that deletes "unnecessary" registry entries.
It may delete something that was actually needed and its kinda hard to detect issues if remains of them do not exist anymore.

Check what uses most of your resources.
Open task manager and look for processes that use most of % of cpu speed.
Sometimes it may be windows update installing new things or windows search indexing new files or windows scanning for malicious software that is not theirs.

Sometimes it is hardware fault:
Storage errors - If your storage is HDD and it got too many errors (that are result of for example power loss when disc was still spinning) it may make system fallback to PIO mode which makes everything going realllllllly slow (and show 100% disc usage in task manager).
CPU overheat - Usage percentage is based on your curent CPU clock if your cpu overheats it slows down to cool down to safe temperatures. it may result in 3 times lower clock.

 

[ziutek]

I don't recommend CCleaner or any registry clean tools (or at least not feature that deletes "unnecessary" registry entries.
It may delete something that was actually needed and its kinda hard to detect issues if remains of them do not exist anymore.

Check what uses most of your resources.
Open task manager and look for processes that use most of % of cpu speed.
Sometimes it may be windows update installing new things or windows search indexing new files or windows scanning for malicious software that is not theirs.

Sometimes it is hardware fault:
Storage errors - If your storage is HDD and it got too many errors (that are result of for example power loss when disc was still spinning) it may make system fallback to PIO mode which makes everything going realllllllly slow (and show 100% disc usage in task manager).
CPU overheat - Usage percentage is based on your curent CPU clock if your cpu overheats it slows down to cool down to safe temperatures. it may result in 3 times lower clock.

I agree with you.
But checking what you wrote requires IT knowledge. On the other hand, after restoring the factory settings, if the computer continues to run slowly then there is no choice but to return it to the sewis to check the components.

 

[KJS]

Hi Snagfnie.
I had similar problems with my laptop.
It is true that it is difficult to replace components because they are integrated into the motherboard in most cases and it is a very expensive process.
However, in my case, restoring to factory settings helped. Of course, before that I copied the necessary things to an external drive.
After a few years of operation, willy-nilly, cookies and other files are installed from the network, which working in the background slow down the hardware.
I hope this will help you.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

I second that. Windows 10 has the ability to easily restore factory settings:

2 Ways to Factory Reset Acer Laptop Windows 10 without Password or Disc

As for 100% CPU usage, I doubt that it could come from faulty hardware. Faulty hardware manifests most often as blue screens. If anything happened with the hardware, I'd suspect the SSD drive first, but as @ziutek wrote, copy your data to the external drive, do a factory reset followed by Windows Update and you should be good.

 

[SlavaOn]

One more suggestion, before you do anything irreversible in trying to fix your laptop.
- if you backup your files to an external drive - test it. Make sure the number of files/folders in the backup and their size matches the original; Also, if you download email files (using Outlook or Outlook Express) - search for .PST files - they will be stored under your user profile in "hidden" AppData\Local\... folders.
- make sure you still have a sticker with your Windows OS serial number. if not, it can be retrieved using free Sysinternals tools. Same goes for MS Office and any other licensed software that you purchased
- do you have Windows 10 OS disk? In many instances, it may be required to have.

If the harddrive in your laptop is a conventional spinning disk, I would recommend to buy a new SSD disk and just replace it. It will spare you from making any backups, since it will be your backup. You may need to purchase a USB adapter to connect it to a laptop for a little money. Thus, you will fix the bottleneck - access to conventional harddisk is the least performing part of any computer.

 

[seek10]

Run the program "task manager" and sort it by CPU. That will help you identify the program that is taking lot of CPU. Once you identify which program is taking lot of CPU, then you can search the net and decide whether you want to remove it or stop it.

At the startup, they tend to take lot of cpu, but settles down to normal usage. Browsers tend to take lot of space. Unfortunately we install lot of unnecessary software semi-consciously.

 

[SHNAGFNAY]

I have no files on it except what downloads from the cloud automatically. I did a factory reset before I did recovery. I have only installed McAfee and Opera, and now CCleaner - which seems to have caused a problem: Every time after I reboot the keyboard letters show the wrong symbols when I type, but it works correctly after pressing Fn+NumLk twice. I remember it had the same issue before I did a factory reset.

I just rebooted the laptop and windows prompted me to sign in to windows, couldn't access, pressed Fn+NumLk twice then entered the password and it worked.

For a minute I also thought I couldn't uninstall apps (uninstall opera) as that only worked through CCleaner, but I just uninstalled ccleaner the normal way. The hard drive is EMMC.

Everything is up to date now and the CPU isn't always on 100% but if I open a window and move it around it goes 100%. Slightly better but not much. If I open Edge browser it takes about 15 seconds for it to load fully. The percentage in Task manager varies between processes, and not touching it, it goes between 15- 45 percent roughly.

 

[SHNAGFNAY]

Well, it is down at around 8 percent if edge is closed (had that open). If I close something it goes 100%, if I click around it goes 100%.

 

[SHNAGFNAY]

 

[Wandering Star]

FWIW.. CCleaner for the basic model (which may untangle some of the cobwebs in a PC).

View attachment 68204
View attachment 68205
Fixing bugs

Run the program "task manager" and sort it by CPU. That will help you identify the program that is taking lot of CPU. Once you identify which program is taking lot of CPU, then you can search the net and decide whether you want to remove it or stop it.

At the startup, they tend to take lot of cpu, but settles down to normal usage. Browsers tend to take lot of space. Unfortunately we install lot of unnecessary software semi-consciously.

These two are very good tips.

In the past with other computers I had the same problem of "saturation" of the cpu and it was always the fault of some process of the antivirus software.

Removing the antivirus software fixed the problem.

I no longer use installed antivirus software, I do a routine cleaning with cccleaner and the system always works fine.

Sometimes antiviruses go crazy with processes that are actually ordinary on the computer.

 

[ToxicCoward]

Reason why your cursor or moving windows is fast is because those are tasks for your gpu and not cpu (8% usage).
Disk usage is only 1%, so i doubt it is storage.

Since even simple apps are taking few percentages of cpu my best bet in this case is cpu overheat or that its cpu clock is limited by power saving mode (click on battery located in tray - in right bottom of screen and check if it is not set to "Better Battery").

Go into performance tab of your task manager and see how much "ghz" there is when cpu is at 100% usage.

 

[seek10]

View attachment 68210

You can play with ending some tasks which you know it is not needed and see how machine runs. If you don't know which program does what etc., you can google it. I am not a big fan of automatic tools to clean as they may screw up some thing else.

By looking at the screen shot and comparing it with my machine, you can stop the following programs and see how it behaves.
Microsoft Content, Microsoft windows search indexer , search etc.

Even though you end these tasks, they may be back when you restart. So once you identify which program to end, you can go to control panel and uninstall it.

Just like any thing else, machine also needs occasional cleanup. I have a tendency to expect every thing should run immediately and can get frustrated when they didn't. So wait few seconds or few min to see CPU is stabilizing or not.