Why So Slow?

[Confused91]

Please forgive the brief intro:

My family has been a Windows family ever since I can remember. From the giant dinosaur computers to the laptops running versions of Windows before 95, you can imagine their horror when I bought an Apple for the first time. 

I'm back in school now, and I absolutely abhor the prices for anything Apple related and found myself in the need of a new laptop. So naturally, I did some shopping, and ended up settling on a HP Notebook 15, touchscreen, Windows 10, and (from what it looked like), a simple laptop that would be satisfactory in performing all of the essays and Powerpoints and things a college student would need. Naturally, you could imagine my horror (or my karma) when I get this laptop home, spending my student loan money, and ending up with a crappy computer.

My laptop specs are as follows: HP Notebook 15, Windows 10 Home, Vers 1607, AMD A8 7410 APU, AMD Radeon R5 2.2GHz, 4.00 GB RAM

My gripes? Why is this computer so slow? It literally takes FOREVER just to copy and paste, it seems to have a million and one things constantly running in the background that I don't even know what for, it always has to update and takes like four minutes just to pull up a screen to tell me that something needs to be updated, etc etc. It is constantly lagging and is absolutely FRUSTRATING just typing an essay, not even connected to the internet.

I have NEVER encountered ANY Windows computer like this. Just everything about it is horrible. And everyone keeps telling me that its not a gaming laptop, probably has a virus, too many applications running, download this, download that to help - but it came out of the box like this! Slow, frustrating, annoying, constantly wanting to update, and seemingly begging to be thrown against the wall. 

This is probably my most technologically advanced and up to date computer that I have had in terms of hard drive space, RAM, and all that other good stuff, but did I end up with just a crappy computer? Or is everything so advanced nowadays that what I think are good specs for a laptop are really just "meh-it-will-get-the-job-done-eventually" specs? I've always thought highly of HP, but if this is what their products are like - needing to update every five minutes, needing to purchase or download other things to make a laptop run faster, needing to go into command prompt to type in strings of things for my computer to tell me that there is nothing wrong with it and that it's running fine - should I just chuck it against the wall and leave Windows for Apple? As much as I'd hate to do it, I'd rather spend a summer slaving away to save up for something that will actually aid me in accomplishing and finishing my degree.

And a side note: I'd like to re-iterate that this computer came like this. Even before I had the two or three programs installed on this computer, this computer was dinosaur-like slow. It has no viruses (which was confirmed by the 2 unnecessary spyware and virus detection programs that came pre-installed), and I even went in and uninstalled all the junk programs that came with it that I would never use. What do I need to do?

(Because I might have to wait until the end of the semester to throw it against the wall). 

[CF4]

Hi

Well Microsoft have their little ways of crippling computers.

If you do your own install of Windows 10 from the MS Creator Tool, then you may get better results.

If you try a live Linux Distro on it thenit will be amazingly quick in comparison.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

https://lubuntu.me/downloads/

If in doubt please ask.

[iomare]

Hi,

Ok. Before throwing the computer against a wall, let us see if we can see how to solve your problem. 

So a new computer will try to update constantly. This is going to use the disk drive and network. You say that you have version 1607 of Windows, so there are 2 newer version and you want to get to version 1709. So we need to try to completely update the notebook. 

Please provide the exact model or product number of the PC so that I can be more specific with drivers and to see if you need a BIOS update etc...

Now to completely update the PC is going to take some time. The other day I updated a new HP computer from 1607 to 1709 (less powerfull computer than yours) and it took about 10 hours. 

This is the easiest way to update to the newest version of Windows. Go to Microsoft website where you can download Windows 10. Click on the blue button "update now" this will download a small app from Microsoft which will first check your system and then will download and update the PC to the latest version of Windows. You can continue using the PC during this process.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Once the latest version has been installed you will need to completely update Windows and drivers. You can do this by going to settings > Update and security > click on verify for updates. Now Windows should also install the updated drivers. You can also find updated drivers on HP support page for your PC.

This is the first task I would perform and then let me know if the PC is running faster. What antivirus is on your computer?

Hope it helps,

David

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