- #1
PWiz
- 695
- 116
I know this sounds a bit dumb, but I'm not that good with computers. I've got a laptop with a 4 GB DDR3 RAM (I've got 2 RAM slots, one is empty), a dual core i5 Processor with a clock rate of 2.5 GHz, a 500GB hard disk with an RPM of 5400 and an NVIDIA graphics card with 2GB of video RAM (I'm not sure if the graphics part is relevant here). My OS is Windows 8.1.
My laptop takes forever to start up and hangs up very often during regular operation, even while performing simple task like opening a web browser. Sometimes it functions smoothly, but after some sessions returns to its stubborn nature. I often program using IDEs such as Visual Express and play some video games which require medium specs, but the computer hangs up much more while performing these tasks.
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I've already disabled as many start-up apps as I can through the task manager and enabled multi-threading in my NVIDIA control panel to allow both processor cores to share the workload, but it's not helping. I've closely monitored my CPU utilization and memory usage percentages from the performance section in the Task Manager during startup and while launching IDEs/games. The CPU % peaks to a 100 one or two times in the first 2 minutes of startup before settling down at around 45, while three-fourths of my memory stays used almost all the time (even when only 1 user is active on the laptop) . I initially suspected that the startup lag was due to my HDD not being able to load the OS onto the RAM fast enough, but this issue persisted even after waking the laptop from "sleep" mode, so I guess there is something more to it. I don't want to tamper with the BIOS because I might accidentally edit some important configuration settings. I also reduced the level of graphics and details in-game and it made almost no difference. The most peculiar thing is that sometimes the laptop works without any of these issues, and it's this irregularity that bothers me.
So what's wrong with my laptop?
My laptop takes forever to start up and hangs up very often during regular operation, even while performing simple task like opening a web browser. Sometimes it functions smoothly, but after some sessions returns to its stubborn nature. I often program using IDEs such as Visual Express and play some video games which require medium specs, but the computer hangs up much more while performing these tasks.
.
I've already disabled as many start-up apps as I can through the task manager and enabled multi-threading in my NVIDIA control panel to allow both processor cores to share the workload, but it's not helping. I've closely monitored my CPU utilization and memory usage percentages from the performance section in the Task Manager during startup and while launching IDEs/games. The CPU % peaks to a 100 one or two times in the first 2 minutes of startup before settling down at around 45, while three-fourths of my memory stays used almost all the time (even when only 1 user is active on the laptop) . I initially suspected that the startup lag was due to my HDD not being able to load the OS onto the RAM fast enough, but this issue persisted even after waking the laptop from "sleep" mode, so I guess there is something more to it. I don't want to tamper with the BIOS because I might accidentally edit some important configuration settings. I also reduced the level of graphics and details in-game and it made almost no difference. The most peculiar thing is that sometimes the laptop works without any of these issues, and it's this irregularity that bothers me.
So what's wrong with my laptop?