SSD really make a difference?

[judyaz]

Hi, one of my laptops has Intel i5, 4 core, 1.6GHz (base).

It is sooo SLOW.  I thought maybe it would be faster because it's 4 core even though it says 1.6 GHz.  It supposedly clocks up to 3.4 GHz, but either way, everything is slow.  Even with a fresh install of windows, opening up the browser and loading webpages takes forever...  I'm going to blame the processor and not the internet.

I disabled most everything that is not needed at start-up.  Did a disk Clean-up, have defragged the hard drive.   Deleted the junk apps and disabled those default annoying Windows 10 apps.    

What can I do to speed this up???   Will an SSD make any difference if I add one and copy the system over?   Or, are there any other ideas?  

[Theoldwizard1]

Yes, a SSD will make a huge difference, but my gut tells me that is not necessarily where your biggest bottleneck is !

Search for CMD.  When found, right click and Run as Administrator.  Then renter the command perfmon.exe  /res  Go to the CPU tab and sort by Average CPU Usage.  Then check the Memory and Disk tabs.  My guess is you have very little Free Memory and you are Hard Faulting like crazy because you need more memory.

Turning things off will help, but I don't know if you can turn enough items off to make a difference.

[judyaz]

Hi,

I did as you said, the computer came with 8 GB Ram.  I looked at the RAM with all the tabs that are usually open, things running, etc. and it ranges from .7 GB to 2 GB free.  On the hard faults column, all of them say 0...  there's a lot of usage in the Standby area, like 2 GB.  I tried clearing my cache and doing a scan disk to see if that would make any difference in the Standby area... but not really.  Wouldn't you think having 1 to 2 GB free would be enough?  My HP Envy has about 1 GB free out of the 8 GB, and it runs fast.

I guess it's just not a good processor.  Hopefully, the SSD if I install one, will help.  I have to check if I even have a slot for that.

Or, are there any other suggestions?

[Theoldwizard1]

I am still betting you  are getting hard faults, but a SSD will help that a lot !

It will also drastically cut boot times.

[judyaz]

How do I know if I am getting hard faults?  Should I just install more RAM even though it's 8 GB?  Or is there something wrong with them, since my other computer has 8 GB and it's a beast in comparison.    Either way, I am definitely going to get the SSD... just trying to get it to "run like a top" as my Grandpa always says about cars lol

[Theoldwizard1 · Accepted solution]

I have a very limited amount of "seat time" with Windows 10.  I found that when I was trying to mount an external disk via a USB3 port, the connection kept getting dropped (multiple connections/disconnections per minute).  Why ?  Too many hard memory faults !  It worked fine on an older notebook via USB2 running WIn7.  

Perfmon /res is your best tool even though it adds to the load on your system.  Start it up, keep it running while you are working.  Watch CPU, Memory and Disk.  You have to ""learn" what a properly running system "looks like".  Less than 1 GB of Free Memory at any time is not good.

I can almost guarantee you adding more memory will help.  IMHO Win10 is a memory HOG  Many things are stated up at boot time that don't need to be.  Even though they are not running and are likely swapped out, they still take a small amount of memory.  A solid state disk is almost as good as adding memory.