My HP 23.8" Touchscreen All-in-One Desktop - Intel Pentium - 1080p running EXTREMELY slow!

[Youness_Maarouf]

RAM: 8gb

Free Space: 859 gb

Antivirus: Nortron 360

Java: Latest

Chrome: Latest

Defrag: 3-5 times a week

Virus Scan: At least weekly

Issue: I keep running into the same issues: when I try to run programs like Discord, Firefox, Chrome, or any of those other things, I find the computer to be lagging very badly. When a browser opens, it may take 5-20 secons for the page to even load (even a basic page like the Google/Firefox search bar). This computer was purchased, came straight out of the box, from Costco. It wasn't purchased used (to my knowledge), and I have done a lot of uninstalling of programs that came with it, but that were unwanted and factory rest it. Despite finding ApplicationFramehost.exe occasionally squatting in my Task Manager (not seeming to take up a lot of RAM, but still somehow lagging my computer and running ghost apps I didn't open), I'm surprised to find that running Firefox, or Minecraft, is causing so many issues.Do we think it might be my RAM?  My cpu use is always high after using chrome and while using it and my disk is usally high

[itsmyname]

It might be your RAM, but I think that it is more likely that your disk-drive is having problems, causing it to be "slow" to work.

Before opening a web-browser, start the Windows Task Manager, and select its "Performance" tab.

View the percentage of CPU that is being consumed, the percentage of "used/unused" RAM, and the level of disk-drive activity.  Then, open the web-browser, and immediately task-switch back to the Task Manager, to see what additional "work" that Windows is doing.

Also, download the free version of the SPECCY software, install it, and run it. Select the "storage" branch,  and expand the "S.M.A.R.T." section, to view the self-monitoring that your disk-drive has been doing. Is everything "good", or is there any "warning" status, implying that the disk-drive is not 100% healthy. Hopefully, the number of "reallocated sectors" will be zero -- the disk-drive has "spare" sectors, like most automobiles have a "spare" tire, that can be activated when some sectors (or one tire) is problematic. Use of those "spare" sectors is not a good sign.

[Youness_Maarouf]

[itsmyname]

In that SPECCY window, click on the word "Storage" to fully-expand that branch of the "tree", to show the "S.M.A.R.T." statistics.  Is everything labelled as "good", or is something labelled as "warning" ?

The Windows Task Manager is showing a 1.5 Ghz processor -- only 50% faster than what Microsoft claims to be the minimum for running Windows 10.   Hmm.

It is also showing that your WiFi network adapter is receiving at 2.8 to 3.0 Megabits per second.  That much activity means that your disk-drive could be "busy" saving whatever is being received, and thus your disk-drive will be "slow" to service your other Input/Output requests.

Note that the disk-drive is transferring at a maximum of 1.5 Mbits/second.

A modern disk-drive can transfer at either 3.0 or 6.0 Mbits/second, if the motherboard is capable of such "SATA-II" or "SATA-III" data-transfer rates.  So, your "antique" disk-drive (or antique motherboard) is not as fast as a new computer (and new disk-drive) would be.

[Youness_Maarouf]

Please explain it to me like i was a child. I am but 14 years old