Laptop is slow

The simple steps didn’t help? A technician would try these next, in this order. Stop as soon as the problem is fixed. Commands marked “as administrator”: right-click Start › Terminal (Admin).

1. Find what is actually slow

   Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc › Performance. Watch CPU, Memory and Disk for a minute while the laptop feels slow. Anything stuck near 100% is the bottleneck. Then open Processes and sort by that column to see which app causes it.

2. Check the hardware: disk type and RAM

   Run this in Terminal. MediaType HDD (a spinning hard disk) with Disk at 100% is the most common cause of a slow laptop; replacing it with an SSD makes it several times faster. Less than 8 GB of RAM with Memory near 100% means it needs more RAM. Both are cheap upgrades a shop can do.

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   Get-PhysicalDisk | Select-Object FriendlyName, MediaType, HealthStatus, Size
   Get-CimInstance Win32_PhysicalMemory | Measure-Object Capacity -Sum | ForEach-Object { "RAM: {0} GB" -f ($_.Sum / 1GB) }

3. Turn off heavy start-up apps and background services

   Task Manager › Startup apps: disable everything with “High” impact that you don’t need right away (updaters, game launchers, cloud apps you don’t use). Then press Win + R, type msconfig › Services › tick Hide all Microsoft services and untick extra services from apps you removed or don’t use.

   Only untick services you recognise. Don’t touch anything from your antivirus or the laptop maker’s drivers.

4. Repair damaged Windows files (as administrator)

   Damaged system files make Windows slow and unstable. sfc checks and repairs them; DISM repairs the store that sfc copies from. Each takes 5–20 minutes. If sfc says it found errors it couldn’t fix, run DISM, then sfc again, then restart.

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   sfc /scannow
   DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

5. Run an offline virus scan (as administrator)

   Some malware hides while Windows is running. This starts Microsoft Defender Offline: the laptop restarts and scans before Windows loads (about 15 minutes). Save your work first.

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   Start-MpWDOScan

   The laptop restarts immediately after this command.

6. Last resort: Reset this PC, keeping your files

   Settings › System › Recovery › Reset PC › Keep my files › Cloud download. Windows is reinstalled fresh; your documents stay, but all apps must be installed again. A technician does this when everything else failed.

   Back up important files to a flash drive or cloud first, just in case. Write down the apps you need to reinstall.