My laptop is really slow, almost unusable.

[ziomalek324]

Hi guys,

Around three years ago I bought myself a new gaming laptop, HP Pavilion Gaming 15-dk1378ng (spec is here: https://support.hp.com/hr-en/document/c06648555). This laptop is a nightmare. I'm trying to get it to work but I just can't really. For the last two years I was trying everything: disk format, reinstalling the system, updating bios, updating every driver (I am updating it as fast as it comes out). My laptop just doesn't work as it should. I'm lagging in every game, i was trying to play League of Legends, FIFA 22, NBA 2k21, GTA V, Fortnite, Apex Legends even Minecraft or NFS Carbon. Opera, Chrome and Mozilla are lagging also. Sometimes I have a problem with youtube video. It's happening from the day I bought my laptop. Every game, doesn't matter the resolution or settings, it just lags. I have like 15-30 FPS in FIFA 22, playing on the lowest or the highest settings. Doesn't matter if I use Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Here is the list of things I've tried but they doesn't work:
- Changing settings in nVidia Experience and in nVidia panel (I set my nVidia GPU as the main one in games)
- Changing power settings
- Installing games on the same disk and partition as my system
- Using Windows' gaming mode
- Changing every possible setting in games to the lowest, mid, high etc., using v-sync
- Using Malwarebyte, Windows Defender, CCleaner and SFC to repair and delete corrupted files or viruses

These are the major changes, I did some smaller ones probably but they also didn't work. I also checked GPU-Z while playing FIFA 22, I set it to show me max V-RAM my GPU used and it showed me 2140 MB, also 10680 MB of ram, which I find weird, because I have 16GB of RAM and my card is 6GB. Maybe it's something that I don't understand.

Guys, I don't know what to do. Even HP support couldn't help. I need your help, I want to play games as I should, I want to use software like Photoshop without lags. What kind of information should I provide to get help? I'm not the best with computers. I will be grateful for every reply.

[NonSequitur777]

@ziomalek324,

According to your laptop's specs (https://support.hp.com/za-en/document/c06648555), your primary drive is a 256 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, and your secondary drive is a 1 TB 7200 rpm HDD.

Have you 'optimized' your M.2 SSD lately?  -Right-click on your drive, left-click on Properties, left-click on Tools, then left-click on "Optimize", again left-click on "Optimize".  In my opinion, 256 GB for a primary gaming drive is way too small.  Upgrade to a 1 TB M.2 such as a Samsung 980 SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. Defrag your secondary HDD.

If you haven't done so already, frequently run a freeware temporary file cleanup utility, such as the free CCleaner download from here: https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/download.  Click on "Health Check", then Start, then "Make it better".

You may have too many startup programs running in the back ground. Go to your Task Manager, click on "Startup", and go through every program and click Disable on all programs you are reasonably sure don't need to run in the background such as Adobe, Cortana, Skype, HP Assistant, etc. etc.

To go a step further, CCleaner has a very useful "Tools" feature: Uninstall programs: go through each program line and determine if you need it or not.  For example, you don't use Skype, Cortana, Alarms & Clock, etc. etc. -get rid of them.

Using File Explorer, right-click on your primary drive -probably: "Windows (C:)", left-click on "Properties", left-click on “Disk Cleanup”, tick off all the little boxes, then click “Clean up system files”, the clean up utility could take some time to run, then when the clean up utility shows up again, tick off any additional boxes that may show up, click "OK" and then on the "Are you sure you want to permanently delete these files?" you click on "Delete Files" to thoroughly clean up your laptop’s hard drive. This may take a while.

Type "Add or remove programs" in your search bar, left-click to start it, change "Sort by:" to "Install date", and go through every one of them. Once again, if you see any program that could broadly be defined as "bloatware" and/or programs you don't care about or need, such as but not limited to: "Xbox Game Bar", "Mail and Calendar", "Phone Link", "Adobe Creative Cloud", (Microsoft) "Tips", "Movies & TV", etc. etc.: UNINSTALL. Good riddance.

Let's start from here.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777