Question Samsung Series 7 NP700Z5AH Slow Performance Trouble

[alphageekboy]

Samsung Series 7 NP700Z5AH, i7-2675QM @2.2GHz, 8GB RAM. System in great condition, largely unused over last several years.

Several years ago this laptop began giving me trouble by randomly freezing, so it went into storage. Tried at one point to clean it and found some possibly-related issues in event logs about iaStor0 errors, but couldn't figure out cause or solution. Ended up upgrading it to Win10 and it seemed to be working for a while, albeit slowly... then this winter it froze on a family member and this is the last attempt to get it working before I toss it. Here's what I did yesterday and where we are at:

• Thinking that the core problem was storage related, I bought a new Kingston SSD and swapped out old HDD.
• Used Samsung recovery CD to clean install Windows 7 clean on the SSD. took a very long time to expand the install files but once done, the install seemed extremely fast. Restarted in seconds. But I spent hours trying to download drivers and get device running but I had so much trouble that I decided to try Win10 again.
• Installed Windows 10 Pro from DVD and spent the next several hours trying to install updates. Unlike Windows 7, the Windows 10 install would take 1-2 minutes to boot, and the downloading/installing of updates seemed to be extremely slow too. So then im back to worrying that theres some issue with storage, but not the SSD itself.
• This laptop has a SanDisk iSSD 8GB in it, so I tried to download and install ExpressCache and Intel Rapid Storage drivers to see if I could get the system to use the cache iSSD and speed it up. Could never get either installer to recognize the iSSD so have given up on that. assuming that its an optional feature that might speed system up if used, but wouldnt slow it down if not used.

At this point, it still takes 1-2 minutes to boot, but once it does, its running fine. I cant see anything in event logs to indicate why its so slow. CrystalDiskMark scores for the new SSD are around 5x faster than the old HDD so im assuming the new SSD itself is not an issue.

Need help troubleshooting the startup issue, maybe figuring out the iSSD cache, before we start depending on this system for anything.

 

[alphageekboy]

FWIW - timing a restart... from the moment the Windows 10 logo appears until you reach the desktop (no password on the account), it took 1:36. After the logo/progress spinner appear/disappear, its just a black screen until you see the user account and desktop. So longer if you time it from a cold boot and when you hit the power button.
And oddly, it seems to shut down quickly, within several seconds it is completely shut down.
So the slow performance seems only during startup and possibly during Windows Update downloads/installs (less confident about that one).