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It is commonly said that the steadiness of a person is a sign of good breeding. Similarly, steadiness and speed of devices like laptops are signals of good quality. ‘Slow and steady wins the race’ is a myth in this technological world because nowadays to work successfully, speed and steadiness are mandatory.
Laptops and other such devices are developed to work quickly and efficiently, so the speed is everything. Working with slow and lagging laptops is so frustrating.
Many people sitting on their working desks in front of their laptops might be thinking why is my laptop running slow and freezing so frequently? Here we are going to present possible reasons and fixes for slow and freezing laptops.
Note: The article is especially for windows based laptops.
Considering only one reason for slow and freezing laptop doesn’t make any sense because there are a lot of reasons that slow down PCs. Some of them are:
- Viruses and Malware
- Window’s updates
- Out dated hardware
- 95% consumption of the hard drive
- Multitasking (working on too many apps simultaneously)
- Overheating is burning a laptop
- Outdated Windows and other softwares
- Too many temporary files on a system
- Many add-ons on browser
- Fragmented files
VIRUSES AND MALWARE:
Malware is one of the leading causes for slowing down PCs and laptops. However, viruses, adware, and spywares are also undesirable for operating systems because they are able to slow down laptops even with good processing power. Sometimes anyone of them can hang the system as well.
How to fix it?
To protect slow and freezing laptop from malware, install some anti-malware software. Also, install anti-viruses to keep your devices safe from viruses as well. These softwares can run automatically in the background or on demand to scan the affected device.
PRO TIP:
Only run one scan at a time because virus scans can lead to slow working because they also run in the background.
WINDOW’S UPDATES:
The most common cause of laptop running slow is that window is updating. Sometimes, a laptop with good storage and CPU feels lagging because the OS starts updating whenever you boot it.
How to fix it?
Manage or disable windows updates because you’ll not like a circle moving on your screen while booting the system asking you to wait.
OUT DATED HARDWARE:
Out dated hardware is also in the list of causes that make a laptop slow. Sometimes a hard drive failure slows down the PC as well. Hard disks are made up of moving parts and per day they spin thousands of times. So, with consistent use, HDDs can wear down making a laptop slow. Inadequate RAM also plays a part in this regard.
How to fix it?
Minimum 4GB RAM is required to perform low-end working and it reaches up to 16GB for efficient performance. Solid state drives are better than hard disks. If your system lacks these requirements upgrade it. Upgrading a system is a wiser decision than buying a new device.
PRO TIP:
Always consider SSD’s while buying your laptop if you are a high-end user. Solid state drives do not experience such degradation. Also, they are ten times faster than hard disk drives.
95% CONSUMPTION OF HARD DRIVE:
When the laptop storage is 95% consumed with programs installed, trash files, downloads etc. then there are 50% chances of a laptop to get slow. The Operating system in your device needs to store temporary files, require space. If the space isn’t available OS will not run properly.
How to fix it?
Time to time try cleaning up your hard drive. i.e. delete trash files from your PC or uninstall programs that are not in use.
MULTITASKING (working on too many apps simultaneously):
Many applications and programs running in the background can eat up RAM and disk space. Also, it can affect the working speed of your system. Multitasking is considered pro nowadays but it is harmful for the performance of laptops.
Also, if many tabs are opened in your web browser automatically your system will get slow.
How to fix it?
To do your work without delays, close all the programs which you aren’t currently using or which are not necessary. Try to close useless tabs as well and disable apps that start automatically.
OVERHEATING IS BURNING A LAPTOP:
When heavy applications are running in the background, CPU has to run hard to quickly process commands, laptops gets hot and fans will try to cool it down. This process may cause laptops to run slow. Also, when heat sink tubes are filled with dust particles there are chances of overheating as well which will be fatal for your CPU performance.
How to fix it?
Kill unnecessary heavy applications immediately and use a cooling pad. It’ll resolve the issue quite a bit. Also, use a compressed gas duster to blow dust from heat sink tubes of laptops.
OUTDATED WINDOWS AND OTHER SOFTWARES:
One of the causes which are not in much focus is outdated platforms residing inside your systems. If your windows, softwares of browser plugins are outdated your computer will automatically start running slow.
TOO MANY TEMPORARY FILES ON A SYSTEM:
The creation or modification of files creates a temporary copy of it. These files are usually created when you kill a program or close an application. Sometimes the system does not kill these files and they take up much space on a hard drive and cause a laptop to slow down.
How to fix it?
To resolve this matter delete your temporary files manually. Use a disk cleanup option available in windows to delete temporary files from a drive.
MANY ADD-ONS ON BROWSER:
Adding too many add-ons in your web browser can increase productivity and enhance the web browsing experience. Great! But the fact is that it also affects the performance of the operating system making your system slow.
Some add-ons are browser adware’s which can also be a reason of laptop running slow and freezing.
FRAGMENTED FILES:
When files are created, edited, or deleted sometimes the data gets fragmented. The fragmentation of data means small chunks of file data is stored in different parts of a hard disk drive. The drive has to jump around at different locations to fetch data which will cause a system to get slow.
How to fix it?
To defragment a drive, follow these steps:
- Click on the magnifying glass icon on the bottom left corner of the display screen.
- Type ‘Defrag’ in the search tab and open it.
- Click Analyze to check how much space is occupied by fragmented files.
- To defrag click optimize.
FINAL WORDS:
There are many underlying causes of laptops running slow. Find out yours with the help of this article. If above mentioned software related reasons are not solving your issues and still your laptop is running slow and freezing, then reinstall your windows. If you find out hardware problems upgrade your system. Hopefully, your problem will be sorted then.
Let us know which reason was disturbing your system. For further details contact us. We’ll be honored to serve you.