SLOW System 30% fragmented

[Bruce-30]

Our laptop has been slowing down, longer to boot up, longer to show a complet web site. overall slower.  I defrag and currently all are at ZERO except for SYSYEM. Thats at 30% fragmented. can this be the cause of the overall slowness?  How do I rectify?

[CherylG]

Have you run Diagnostics on hard drive? A failing hard drive is a common cause of the issues you are having. Immediately after powering on start tapping the F2 key to open System Diagnostics. 

[Bruce-30]

I will try that thank you

[Bruce-30]

Over the last few days I have ran each and every F2 on strart up diagnostic terst listed. ALL gave a PASSED result. Which is good.  But SYSTEM in the windows defrag is still at 30% fragmented. Cannot defrag SYSTEM. SYSYEM I assume is the WINDOWS program?  How to defrag WINDOWS?  Or would reinstalling WINDOWS from hard drive sector be the way to go?

[CherylG]

Your computer reads the boot loader off the System Reserved partition, and it boots Windows from your drive C. Once Windows starts to boot it does not use  files in System Reserved partiton. System reserved is best left alone as you could end up with a no-boot machine.

Overall slow performance arising after some time could be caused by many things.Your Windows installation has accumulated a lot of junk files, too many installed programs have added themselves to startup with Windows, Malware on machine,etc - and a dying/aging hard drive as mentioned earlier.

A fresh install using HP Recovery Manager is one solution (other than aging hdd) or you could run CCleaner and use it to clean up files, startup programs,etc. Malwarebytes Free is an good program to scan for malware/spyware on the machine.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds

https://www.malwarebytes.com/premium/

[CherylG]

In reference to reinstalling Windows from the Recovery hard drive partition. While it is faster to reinstall from the partition than it is using Recovery Media- just wanted to be sure you are aware that you can and should also create your recovery Media. In the event of a hard drive failure you would need it to reinstall Windows on a new hard drive.

Creating Recovery Media for>Windows 7

[Bruce-30]

my "C" drive is 0% fragmented, my RECOVERY "D" is 0% fragmented, my HP TOOLS is 0% fragmented, my SYSTEM is 30% frgmented.   is the SYSTEM same as windows?   thats where im still little confused 

[CherylG · Accepted solution]

No.System holds the boot loader which hands it off to Windows on C. Once it is booting into Windows it does not use that System reserved any more.

Btw, you really shouldn't be defragging the Recovery drive.

[Bruce-30]

trying CCleaner   see how that goes  THANK YOU

[CherylG]

CCleaner is a great tool for cleaning up a machine.I have used it for years on different models. Be sure to check ou the Startup tab to see how many programs are starting up each time that you probably don't need. Most are better opened from their Start menu entry when/if you need them-not running everytime the machine boots up.