My month old laptop is performing a lot worse than the one I got rid of

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Tom Dyal

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Jan 25, 2015
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I switched from the Lenovo Y410p to the Lenovo Y50 after an unfortunate accident. I had extra money so I decided to get an upgrade. But when I try to play games on the new Y50, it performs a lot worse than the old one. Such as game freezing, entire system freezing, low fps at times in game, and weak wifi connection (I've had to restart at least 6 times today because the entire system froze). Some people say the fps problem was from the resolution change (the Y50 has a bigger screen) but when I change it, it really does nothing. As for the constant freezing, it is a new laptop so overheating from dust blockage shouldn't be that big of an issue. This never used to happen with my old one. Can anyone help, or did I just make a bad choice for my new laptop?
 
Solution
Screen size has nothing to do with resolution. Any size screen can run higher or lower resolutions, up to whatever the supported maximum is. If the older unit had a 720p resolution and the newer one has a 1080p resolution, then yes, you might take a hit on FPS. That doesn't account for any of the other issues though.

The Y50 is known to have overheating issues during intense extended gaming sessions, so it could be related to that, but doesn't necessarily have to be.

I'd start with doing a clean install of the GPU drivers, by which I DON'T simply mean installing the latest ones over older drivers or just uninstalling and re-installing the drivers. Following the steps in the CLEAN driver installation section at the following link...
That looks much better. Maybe the first run was a fluke. You only have about five degrees variance between threads this time and temps are well within tolerance. While it's still possible, I don't believe you have a thermal issue with either the CPU or GPU. Overall, temps are not bad for a laptop running prime or Furmark. All temps stayed within limits and nothing was throttling, which it would have been had there been a significant issue.

So that leaves either a driver or file system issue in regard to your performance being questionable. Before going through the process of reinstalling the OS, let's see if doing a clean installation of the drivers will solve it. Go to the following link and follow the instructions regarding doing a CLEAN graphics card driver installation. Read the Clean drivers section and perform the steps as outlined. See if there is a change in performance.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2492424/laymans-simple-guide-solving-graphics-card-issues.html
 
Ok. I see where right off the bat I had recommended it, and then you did the SFC Scannow but never mentioned it again so if you DID go through that already, no sense in doing it again. If you did NOT run the Display driver uninstaller, download the latest drivers for your GPU model and do a fresh installation, you should do that now.

If you DID do it already, then I suppose the only real option left is to reinstall the OS which I'll be glad to help you with but which may take some time so you may want to do it another day.
 
But do you think that if I re-install the OS it could fix any of my freezing problems, poor fps problems, or weird random glitches (For instance microsoft narrator randomly opening and randomly switching tabs in the middle of when I'm typing)? Also can your hardware have anything at all to do with wifi speed ? Because as I mentioned before, with my old laptop I could connect to the internet no problem in the room farthest from the router but with this one that is not the case.
 
Absolutely. ALL of those things could, and probably are, a result of some issue with the OS. We just needed to eliminate the probability of it being hardware first, since it's generally non-destructive to diagnose hardware issues first. I try to not make anybody have to reinstall windows if it isn't necessary but I think we've come to the point where it almost HAS to be software rather than hardware. Since all the drivers are up to date, I guess, you still didn't verify if you had done that before or if it got skipped over, then the OS is really the only other possibility aside from the BIOS, which you said was current and the motherboard, which we can't really convict until we determine nothing else could possibly be at fault.
 
Ok well I will be home today around 4. And we can do a clean install of the OS then. And don't worry I followed all the steps of the clean uninstall of my driver too. I did that a while back but I guess I forgot to tell you.
 
Ok, so what you want to do is back up any personal data that can't be replace including music, pictures, video, application documents, installer files you've downloaded for games or applications so you can reinstall them after the OS installation is done and any settings you want backed up and probably it wouldn't be a bad idea to export your browser favorites to a file so you can import them back in after installation. Anything that can't be replaced, back up somewhere.


Run the magic jellybean keyfinder, and record your product key on paper, just in case you're asked for your product key during the install:

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/



Then, go to the following link and follow the instructions on creating installation media:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media


After creating the installation disk or USB image, disconnect all external or secondary drives from the system if you have more than one internal hard drive. Follow the directions at the following link EXACTLY, including choosing the "CUSTOM" option during the installation process. When you get to the point where it asks you what partition you want to install windows on, click the "drive options (advanced)" option and then delete ALL of the existing partitions on the hard drive until NO partitions remain. Once there is only a single entry left that says "unallocated space" click the next button and install.

This will walk you through each step of the process.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html

After it's complete, install the most recent GPU drivers from the AMD or Nvidia website.

Once done, install ALL of the relevant drivers for your model from the product page except the GPU drivers which you'll want to install from the Nvidia or AMD website so you have the latest version(Might be a good idea to go download those first and save them to an external disk or DVD so you already have them after the install). Next, go into Control Panel, windows update, and change the settings to "Check for updates but let me decide whether to download and install them" so that the automatic updating doesn't screw with this next step, which it will if you don't change that setting as it will be busy doing it's own thing while you're trying to download or check for updates.

Run windows update manually by clicking on check for updates, and install any critical, important or optional updates that are not GPU related until further rebooting and checking for updates does not discover further available updates. Once you get to the point where no further updates are listed after clicking check for updates, change the setting back to "update automatically" or whatever you normally have it set at.

Reinstall your applications and games, import your browser settings or favorites back into your browser and see what's up.


If you have any questions or get stuck somewhere, just ask and I'll do my best to keep track of this thread until you're done.
 
Sorry I just started with the clean install. I wasn't able to get around to it last night. But I'm a little hung up on how to install all the relevant drivers from the product page. Frankly im not even sure what you mean.
 
Ok don't worry about that I think I figured out how to do it. But now I just need help connecting to my internet. It seems it only wants to connect through ethernet, how do I fix this?
 
Under driver downloads on your laptop models product page on the manufacturers website, there are drivers for chipset, audio, network adapters, etc. The basic drivers windows installs for these are not always the best ones you could be using. Finding and installing the manufacturer recommended drivers often improves performance, compatibility and optional features with some hardware beyond what the Microsoft supplied drivers are capable of.

Other times, the OEM drivers as listed on any given product page may have not been updated in some time, since the hardware manufacturer itself may have released newer drivers for that particular component that say, HP, used in their PC desktop or laptop model, in which case, either the hardware manufacturer or Microsoft may have newer drivers. The most current drivers offered on any given product page are generally the MOST likely to work correctly and be compatible with the OS that came on the device though. As with anything, there are always exceptions and especially in the case of graphics card drivers, you want to use the manufacturer supplied drivers.

AMD and Nvidia are examples of hardware manufacturers. The drivers provided by them on their website are always the most current and best example of the drivers that should be used. Generally, they also list all previous driver versions as well, for those who for whatever reason have a particular hardware device that presents issues with specific driver versions, but are not caused necessarily by the card itself.

ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire, EVGA, Powercolor, Palit, Zotac, XFX and Diamond are examples of hardware vendors or second tier manufacturers. They do design and make their own versions of graphics adapters, like the GTX 970 or R9 290X, but they use hardware supplied by the original hardware manufacturer, chiefly AMD or Nvidia. They incorporate their own cooling systems and determine how specifics of the hardware will be designed including PC board length, cooling designs and clock speeds among other things but they do not provide the actual drivers. Those come from the OEM, again, Nvidia or AMD.

Other types of hardware, such as system motherboards, processors, storage controllers, sound cards or integrated sound processors and other hardware that may be found in any given motherboard or laptop is not made by, say, HP or Lenovo, in almost all cases, but is outsourced and used to build a complete system. This is why the drivers may best be found on the PC manufacturers website for the specific model in question as they will be sure to provide drivers that were known to work with the included operating system and be compatible with the other hardware that makes up the unit.


In some cases, those drivers will be distinctly different than the ones natively installed by Windows for any given hardware component. Windows often uses drivers with basic or limited functionality, that may work with a variety of components rather than a specific device or component, in order to maximize compatibility and reduce the number of drivers the OS needs to make natively available. Further information about drivers can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_driver


The best drivers, at least at face value and as a starting point (Newer drivers that add functionality and improved performance for each particular component MIGHT be available from the company that MADE the component, be it the soundchip on the system board or the wireless adapter driver) for your system are located here:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/lenovo-y-series-laptops/y50-70-touch-notebook-lenovo
 
No, for the wireless adapter you only need to install one driver.


Do you know whether your unit has the Intel wireless adapter or one of the other possible adapters?


If the laptop is connected via Ethernet, you can also go into Control panel, Device manager, double click on the Network adapters and then find the device (Which likely is already remarked by a question mark or exclamation point) for your wireless connection.


Right click on that device, (Might also not be listed under network adapters yet) and select update driver software, and then update automatically. You should actually be able to do this for any of the remarked devices listed, one by one. You'll need to be connected to the internet via your Ethernet cable though for this to work.

If it doesn't find a driver or if you know which brand of adapter you have, you can simply download the driver, or download them both, from the two drives I listed above, to a USB or flash drive, plug it into your laptop and run the driver installer. If one of them fails to install because it says it's the wrong device or it doesn't enable the wireless, try the other one.
 
Ok well it turns out my wireless adapter is fine. But it just needed to connect to Ethernet for a little while and then when I unplugged it I was able to connect back to the internet.