How to restore my laptop's performance to its original state? Factory reset did not speed things up.

[raymanh]

(2011 Dell XPS 15 L502X, Core i5, 4GB ram, 7200rpm HD, 1GB Nvidia graphics, Win 7)

I have done a complete factory restore, but it is still slow when doing simple things like loading Word, or when I click on the home button it takes a second or two to load, and when I hover the mouse over the menus it takes a couple of seconds to react. Its not how I remember it when it was new, despite having done a complete factory reset and also installed all new updates. Why is this? And how can I get the performance back?

 

[Laptop_Nerd]

Hi,

Since you've already did a factory reset then the problem may lie with the HDD of your laptop. If you have a spare HDD, do try it with your laptop and see if the same problem will persist or not. If the same problem will persist with a different HDD that could be a problem with the temperature of the laptop. Do open it and clean the fans from dust and apply new thermal paste as well on the CPU and GPU.

 

[raymanh]

I've downloaded a program (CPUID HW monitor) to see the temps of various components, and currently my CPU and HDD are sitting at 60 C (143 F) and 52 C (125 F) respectively whilst browsing Chrome with 7 or 8 tabs open. Task manager says my CPU usage is about 15% and RAM usage is 2.4GB. The fan is on about 80% of the time. Is this normal, or a sign of overheating; that I should give it a clean?

 

[rehed21]

CrystalDiskInfo is a free program that will check the health of your hard drive. It wouldn't hurt to blow dust out of your heat sink & fan using compressed air (with the laptop turned off).

 

[hang-the-9]

I've downloaded a program (CPUID HW monitor) to see the temps of various components, and currently my CPU and HDD are sitting at 60 C (143 F) and 52 C (125 F) respectively whilst browsing Chrome with 7 or 8 tabs open. Task manager says my CPU usage is about 15% and RAM usage is 2.4GB. The fan is on about 80% of the time. Is this normal, or a sign of overheating; that I should give it a clean?

Download Prime95, run the stress test (blended is fine) with HWMonitor open, see how hot the CPU gets. As above, slowness after a clean Windows setup is often a failing hard drive, which means replacing and a clean Windows setup. You can also clone your existing drive over.