HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop Performance Issues.

[UnequivocallyMe]

I recently purchased this device (HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec0xxx) in April of this year from my local Best Buy retailer.  I was initially very satisfied with my purchase.  The laptop worked well, ran my games, and was the right price.

Unfortunately, as of this past Wednesday (7/15/2020) the laptop has become almost unusable.  It is lagging in just about everything I ask it to do.  There are significant visual and sound delays whenever any task is being asked of it, whether it is opening a web browser or file browser, playing a video or media file, or any kind of gaming.  The CPU usage is completely normal, as is the memory usage.  I don't see any good reason for the computer to have suddenly started lagging this badly.  I mostly play League of Legends and MTG Arena on this device - neither game is incredibly graphically demanding.  Both of these games have become unplayable, with severe FPS issues.  The frames per second were never a problem before, and now they are down to 10, 5, even 2 or 3.  I would think it is simply an issue with performance, but this kind of visual lag is happening in the OS as well.

I have tried everything I know to fix this problem.  I reduced the graphics settings on my games to their lowest levels.  I reduced the Windows OS settings to their lowest levels.  I increased the PC's performance to it's highest settings.  I checked and installed the latest drivers for both the Radeon and NVIDIA video cards that came pre-installed in the laptop.  I ran several anti-virus scans and found no viruses of any kind.  I deleted all temporary files, removed all unnecessary programs and stopped all non-essential processes.  I defragmented the disk and ran repairs on all the games.  I removed all user programs and re-installed them.  I even did a complete 'reset' on the computer, deleting all files and starting with a fresh install of Windows 10.  Nothing has resolved the lag either in the gaming experience or in the OS.

I am very frustrated.  I have no idea why the Gaming PC would run my games and my OS perfectly fine for the first 3 months of it's life, and then suddenly start acting like it is infected with a serious virus (even though none is present).  It can take a full 10 seconds to load a webpage fully.  I have the fastest internet available over cable.  I have zero issues with my ISP.  My games are freezing and jerky and completely unplayable.  But there was never a problem before and nothing changed from what I can tell.

I really enjoyed my HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop and I don't want to spend any more time trying to solve this issue.  I don't feel like I should be having these problems.  Please let me know if there are any fixes I'm not aware of or haven't tried.  

Thank you so much!!!

[Betty0610]

@UnequivocallyMe

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

Let's update the BIOS: https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c00042629

Also, let's update the chipset driver: https://support.hp.com/in-en/drivers

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accept as solution" button, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!

[BredWud]

Unexpectedly, this model seems to be prone to such problems.
Actually, 2 days after the purchase, the same thing happened. I did almost everything the same as you, but did not reduce the graphics settings and the like both in the OS and in games.
I updated the BIOS to the latest version of F.05, and also updated the drivers through the official application "HP Support Assistant" (I didn't seem to do anything else). Launched the next day and everything worked, but sometimes it happens that it can start with the same problem (not very often, but it happens). In this case, you just need to turn it off and wait for 20-30 minutes.

Unfortunately, I also noticed that for some reason, 2.1 GB of RAM is reserved by hardware (that is, it is simply not used). At the moment I am looking for a way to solve this problem.

I got the same laptop at the beginning of July this year.

[Betty0610]

@BredWud

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

Please help us with the product/model name/number.

Thanks 🙂

[TheStoneMonkey]

This is for my HP Pavilion 15-ec0xxx laptop. I as well bought this computer to play League of Legends, and watch things through an internet browser. I have used this computer for only these things, and haven't stored anything else on this computer.  This slowness/lagging problem started about one week ago.  There was one bluescreen event the week previous, but didn't happen again.  I have updated everything, drivers and windows updates. Refreshed twice, the first time was with saving files, the second was the total wipe with hard drive cleaning, and downloading windows from the cloud.  This didn't solve my problem, I even contacted Microsoft customer support, and after talking with them we performed a custom installation of windows. None of this has solved my problem, and I have three months left on my warranty.  I am trying hard to resolve this problem, and have my computer restored to normal operation... the only thing I have found on the internet was an old thread that talked about thermal throttling. 

[Betty0610]

@TheStoneMonkey

Welcome to the HP Support Community.

I recommend you to contact the HP Support Team regarding this as this could be a hardware issue.

Link: www.hp.com/contacthp/

Note:  Select the country accordingly to get the contact details for support.

Let me know if this helps.

If the information I've provided was helpful, give us some reinforcement by clicking the "Accept as solution" button, that'll help us and others see that we've got the answers!

Thanks!

Have a great day!