Laptop used to be fast now Slow

AZFuego

Estimable
Jul 21, 2014
2
0
4,510
My laptop used to run fast. Now it's slow and gets hung up all the time. I'm running windows 8. It came pre-installed with it and no disk so I don't believe re-installing is an option. It is an intel i5 with 8GB of RAM. I have 311GB free of a 600GB hard drive. What can I do?
 

popatim

Splendid
Moderator
Almost all laptops come with a way to make your disks. Since you don't list which make or model laptop you have then all I can do is refer you to the owners manual, which might be on the harddrive too. At minimum you can make a System repair disk from windows Backup & Restore utility; and if you have an external hdd you can create an image file of your drive exactly as it is now plus run a backup.

As for the slowdown it could be a number of things; heat buildup, hdd full or problematic, laptop put into power saving mode by someone else (software), malware/virus ...

The important thing here is to have your disks so you dont end up buying windows again, and to backup your important files (because its only a matter of when will your hdd break, not if it will)