FPS drops from 60-100 FPS to 10-20 FPS for every game

[Astrrll]

I got this laptop from my friend and it's my first Windows computer. I downloaded everything that I needed and started to play games with it. After a couple of minutes of playing, my game will lag down to 10-20 FPS for a couple of seconds and then will go back up. I updated my drivers, and I changed so many settings to help with it and it doesn't work. How do I stop my games from lagging?

[Photoray002]

Hello @Astrrll 

I'll try to help as best I can, but I need to know the exact Product number (P/N)of your M7.

If you open the HP support assistant, it will give you the full Product number. Don't post the Serial number (S/N).

Thanks.

[Astrrll]

The Product Number is M1W07UA#ABA

[Photoray002]

OK thanks. Your model number is  m7-n101dx.

I forgot to ask, what game are you playing that the FPS drops to 10?

Also, its important to know if its doing that when you play on battery only or when the power cord is plugged in?

[Astrrll]

The game that I'm playing is Fortnite, and it happens even if i have it plugged in and the power mode is at "Best Performance"

[Photoray002]

You should have the Nvidia control panel installed. Open it and see if it gives an option to run on the Nvidia 940M graphics card only. Take it off of auto select and choose the Nvidia card only. You should be able to choose it via the Global tab for always on, or choose Program settings and choose to run it on Fortnite only.

It will look something like this...

[Astrrll]

I put it on "High-Performance NVIDIA processor" and it made my frames worse.

[Photoray002]

If that made it worse, then you might have a hardware problem that I wont be able to help with.

Turn of the computer and make sure the power cord is plugged in.

Press the power button and immediately spam the F2 key. IF you have the UEFI Diagnostics menu appear, go to component tests and navigate to the video test and run it.

IF you don't have the UEFI diag menu, just a basic black menu with a two or three options, that wont work. You will have to install the diagnostics into Windows instead.

Here is the link if you do... Windows 10 diagnostics app.

Test the graphics and see if you get any error. It may or may not give one, but it will be helpful if it does.

[Astrrll]

It didn't give me any errors

[Photoray002]

Was the UEFI Diag tool listed when you booted to F2 or did you have to download the Windows version?

Can you run the Extensive Test for everything and see if somethings else like the motherboard or memory gives an error?

If that does not find anything, Boot into Windows and open the Task Manager (ctrl/alt/del), click once on the CPU tab to highlight it and make it show the highest percentages on top.

Then run a game, but you may have to run it in Windowed Mode so you can easily switch to the Task Manager.

You're going to look at the Processes Tab list when the game start lagging to see if there is any service taking up a lot of resources during that moment. It could be an anti virus program or something else. You can end that task and see if the lag stops.