Slow laptop, a whole bunch of other issues

[ac2017]

Hello,

We've had this computer for over a year and a half. It was a gift to my parents. I've noticed that it's always been insanely slow. So I limited what was allowed during startup. That didn't change anything. Also, I've changed the paging file in Windows 10 settings to match the computer recommended settings, and that did nothing. I've uininstalled most of what came with the computer, but it's still slow.

Also, the computer doesn't reboot. It'll always say that it's getting Windows ready, and to not shut Windows down. I've come back to check a couple hours later, and it's still getting ready to reboot. This is unacceptable.

The computer is an Envy X360 m6-w101dx.

I want a clean install of Windows 10, no bloatware. Please make this happen for me.

[WAWood]

@ac2017

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

What you are calling "bloatware" is what HP included with the preinstalled OSs -- and any HP Recovery Media is automatically going to reinstall that stuff when you do a factory reset.  There is no way around that.

The ONLY way to avoid the "bloatware" is to install an MS clean version of Win10, but the product key that came embedded in your PC is for the HP OEM version of Win10.

I have heard that doing a clean-install will work and will activate -- but I do not have an HP preinstalled Win10 PC to test that, so there's a chance that will not work.

What I would do, if this were mine, would create an image backup of the PC on an external drive using a utility known as Macrium Reflect.  That way, if the clean-install worked but would not activate, I would have an image to restore FROM to get the previous PC installation back>

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes

Once you have that backup, then use this link to create Win10 installation media, boot from it, and install Win10:  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install?ocid=ms_wol_win10

When you see the step for entering a product key, skip over that.

Good Luck

[ac2017]

Thank you for the descriptive reply, @WAWood. I really appreciate it. If we choose to do that, I'll follow your instructions. Sadly it seems like we'd need to purchase a new product key for Windows 10 if it doesn't work, correct?

My parents threw away the box long ago, so we don't have a product key, but it seems like it's not necessary, correct?

Before we try anything drastic like this, are there options for speeding up the computer? I've always had good experiences with HP in the past, so it was really surprising that this computer we spent over a few hundred dollars on runs like a computer with 1/8 of the specs listed.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@ac2017

There's a chance, since the PC was already running Win10, that when you do a clean-install from MS Media, and skip over the page for entering the product key, that once you get up and running, and online, MS will simply reactivate Wih10 using the information it has already stored in its Activation Servers.

But if that does not work, then you are correct -- you would have to purchase a license from MS.

As to speeding up the laptop, not much can be done as the only items that are replaceable are the system memory and the hard drive.  IF it is running on 2GB of memory, then increasing that to 4GB will result in some performance improvement.

But the biggest improvement comes from replacing the HDD with an SDD.  I did that on an old DV6 laptop and it's now like having a whole new PC!

Good Luck

[alexdal]

I bought an Envy 17 k205nl 2 years ago and is always been very slow.

After windows 10 became slower and slower.

So I decided: bought a SSD disk, change the disk inside and do a clean windows 10 installation without any HP software.

Before the computer started in 3 minutes now in 3 seconds.

Before browsing was very slow (sometime stopped for 10 minutes) now i can open internet pages in one second or less

I use now also a new wifi in usb because the envy wifi module worked only at 2,4 Mhz

[ac2017]

Glad to know it's not just me. I did do a clean install and that helped a little bit, but it's still really slow. I'll have to put in an SDD.  Will I need to do anything on Windows like Mac (enabling Trim)? Or just clone the old HDD and put it in?

Also, I may definitely also get a USB wifi module. I've noticed it's pretty slow as well.