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New Toshiba laptop very slow

  • 05-01-2018 11:56pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭


    Hoping someone might be able to advise here.....

    I bought a new Toshiba satellite laptop about 6 or 8 months ago, and right from the off it's been annoyingly slow. I previously had an Acer and it was (in hindsight) brilliant, but the screen died.

    This new one hangs a lot. Takes aaaages to load pages. Frequently just freezes for minutes at a time. Even to turn off, there might be a ten second lag between pressing the bottom left button and the power options popping up (that sounds not so bad when I write it but it drives me NUTS!)

    Trouble is, I don't know what's causing the slowdowns and they don't happen all the time. Just a lot of the time.

    I haven't installed loads of stuff on it, and only use it for browsing and documents.

    I've AVG Free installed and availed of a free trial if their "pc tune up", but that didn't make much difference.

    The guy I bought it from (a small independent, not a chain store) sort of vaguely offered to have a look but didn't sound very interested when i had it back with him for something else, and I can't actually point at anything and say "THAT" is wrong.

    I just feel that a new laptop that I spent 400 quid on should perform a lot better than this one is.

    Is there any way of finding out what night be causing the slowness/lag? I have a Samsung tablet that's as sharp as a pin so it's not my broadband.

    Apologies for the vague description and question, I'm hopeless st this tech stuff and really hope someone might advise me what to do.

    Thanks!


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    beauf wrote: »

    I have only the vaguest idea of what any of that means I'm afraid.

    I'm away from the laptop at the moment but will go through those tomorrow and see if I can make any sense of them. I'll also post model no.

    Thanks!

    Just wondering, should a "good" laptop (which I was assured this one was - I know, I know!) need supplementing or upgrading so early on? If it was 5 years old I'd understand slowing down.. But from brand new?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    A Cheap laptop is under 500.

    A mid range is 500~1000

    and expensive is 1000~3000


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    beauf wrote: »
    A Cheap laptop is under 500.

    A mid range is 500~1000

    and expensive is 1000~3000

    Right so.....

    :eek:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    That said I used a couple of 10yr old laptops for light browsing and office stuff quite happily. They all have SSDs though. I also use a €150 netbook for really simple tasks.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,593 ✭✭✭theteal


    Yeah we've no way of knowing how good it is until you can let us know the model. I've seen some ok-ish laptops for €400 but I've also seen some absolute turds for similar prices in the last while. There's a lot more value to be had I n the 2nd hand market but that info is not much use to you now


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    beauf wrote: »
    That said I used a couple of 10yr old laptops for light browsing and office stuff quite happily. They all have SSDs though. I also use a €150 netbook for really simple tasks.

    Yeah the Acer was probably heading for 10 years old but was FAR better than this new one - until the screen packed up. And the battery was completely shot.

    But performance wise there was no comparison. From the price I thought the Toshiba would be in the same ballpark.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 84,762 ✭✭✭✭Atlantic Dawn
    M


    How much RAM has the laptop? Adding RAM can speed things up but the best performance increase is to add a SSD, boots up in seconds.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    ...But performance wise there was no comparison. From the price I thought the Toshiba would be in the same ballpark.

    My 10yr old laptop is faster than many of the cheap laptops sold today.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    theteal wrote: »
    Yeah we've no way of knowing how good it is until you can let us know the model. I've seen some ok-ish laptops for €400 but I've also seen some absolute turds for similar prices in the last while. There's a lot more value to be had I n the 2nd hand market but that info is not much use to you now

    I know where to go for advice next time then!

    I thought I was doing the right thing going to this indie guy rather than a big chain - they've done repairs for me before, and for colleagues, and are decent guys who've never let us down. I'd hate to think he knowingly sold me a dud.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    How much RAM has the laptop? Adding RAM can speed things up but the best performance increase is to add a SSD, boots up in seconds.

    How would I tell? :o

    I'll post model and whatever other details I can tomorrow.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    The most important spec you have mentioned is 400.00Euros

    What kind of performance are you expecting for 400.00Euros?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 84,762 ✭✭✭✭Atlantic Dawn
    M


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    How would I tell? :o

    I'll post model and whatever other details I can tomorrow.

    :D Right click on the Windows start button in the bottom left and select System, the Device Specifications will list installed RAM.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    Some new laptops are not fast but they have like 10 hours of battery life. They are designed to be good at that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    The most important spec you have mentioned is 400.00euros

    To be fair I wasn't looking for super dooper spec, just a basic laptop for browsing and documents.

    What I got was something that reminds me of the dial-up days, that is incredibly frustrating to use.

    I'm just trying to figure out if I can find out what the problem is. I find it hard to imagine that it's actually designed to work this badly.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    To be fair I wasn't looking for super dooper spec, just a basic laptop for browsing and documents.

    What I got was something that reminds me of the dial-up days, that is incredibly frustrating to use.

    I'm just trying to figure out if I can find out what the problem is. I find it hard to imagine that it's actually designed to work this badly.

    It just sounds like you got what you paid for. If you’re not happy I’d sell it and move on


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,593 ✭✭✭theteal


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    I know where to go for advice next time then!

    I thought I was doing the right thing going to this indie guy rather than a big chain - they've done repairs for me before, and for colleagues, and are decent guys who've never let us down. I'd hate to think he knowingly sold me a dud.

    The bigger chains can work off smaller profit margins. I just can't see that youd get that much of a bargain on a new sealed machine from an indie - I could be wrong. Anyway not to panic, all these things are fixable


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    beauf wrote: »
    Some new laptops are not fast but they have like 10 hours of battery life. They are designed to be good at that.

    It has maybe 4 or 5 hours battery life. So good but not incredible.

    It's not that it's just slow - it hangs and freezes a lot and the odd time I've had to force close it down as I cannot even get ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    It has maybe 4 or 5 hours battery life. So good but not incredible.

    It's not that it's just slow - it hangs and freezes a lot and the odd time I've had to force close it down as I cannot even get ctrl-alt-del to bring up the task manager.

    4 to 5 hours is fairly decent in fairness


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    4 to 5 hours is fairly decent in fairness

    Battery life is the least of my concerns!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,211 ✭✭✭✭Suckit


    Try to remove bloatware https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ and run a scan using your browser on PC Pitstop. It is not ideal but should be able to tell you what is slowing it down. http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/
    Run your browser as administrator, you do not need to create an account.

    You could also try Aida64 https://www.aida64.com/downloads but should not be necessary if you have scanned with PCPitstop tools.

    Download CCleaner and go to Startup programs and Untick everything. Restart PC and see if it is still slow.

    A PC 6-8 months old should not be as slow as you describe it. Even if it is under €200. It should run with modern software, unless you have installed something that is a resource hog on it (or unless it came pre-installed.).

    You could also download Rufus or Etcher (or a million other tools) and try installing Ubuntu (I chose that because it is not a slimmed version) from here - https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

    This may seem like a lot to do, but if you do it in order, it really is not. Rufus or Etcher are very simple to use. I am not sure whether or not you will like Ubuntu, but you do not have to install it, You only need to boot from USB and see if your PC is still slow running Firefox and opening office documents etc.. https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1013017/

    If you are using Steam or similar, that will slow down PC also.

    Then we can check if you have Malware (which is likely) but not until after determining whether or not you have decent basic hardware


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    Battery life is the least of my concerns!

    I can imagine
    What you have described sounds very frustrating
    I think it’d probably be a waste of money paying someone to have a look at it
    Bring it back to the shop, ask him what he thinks and go from there


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    Despite numerous attempts I cannot for the life of me upload a pic of the spec of the computer :mad:

    Installed RAM 4.00GB
    Processor Intel Pentium CPU N3700 A 1.60GHz
    Device Name Laptop H5ENLM0B
    System type 64-bit operating system

    I think these are the useful bits of info.

    Thanks everyone for the help so far!

    ETA - I'm waiting half the day for a live chat for a totally different (non-laptop) problem - after that I'll start working through the tests/solutions recommended above


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,593 ✭✭✭theteal


    OK, the processor is not great, to say the least.
    Is there an extra Ram slot?
    In your shoes, i'd buy a SSD, double the RAM and do a clean install of Windows - if not a less heavy duty OS.

    Not much else you can do, really.




    EDIT - I'm guessing it's something like this. These seem to be end of life everywhere I can find them. It's old stock unfortunately. Anyway, do the above and it'll be usable


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    theteal wrote: »
    OK, the processor is not great, to say the least.
    Is there an extra Ram slot?
    In your shoes, i'd buy a SSD, double the RAM and do a clean install of Windows - if not a less heavy duty OS.

    Not much else you can do, really.




    EDIT - I'm guessing it's something like this. These seem to be end of life everywhere I can find them. It's old stock unfortunately. Anyway, do the above and it'll be usable
    That's the one. Hmmm. Looks like I got done, going by that price.

    Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,157 ✭✭✭✭Alanstrainor


    A decent SSD will be 80 euro or so for 256GB of storage. The RAM should cost another 50 or 60.

    But honestly, before you start looking to spend money you need to give this machine it's best chance.

    Open task manager (right click on the task bar and select from there). There's a tab in task manager called start-up. Click on it. Now look at the applications in here, ideally you should disable most of them. These are applications that start and bog down your computer when you turn it on.

    You should consider uninstalling unused programs that might be harming performance too. Are there games installed you don't use? Is there some other anti-virus installed? Microsoft has included protection with Windows 10 so I would recommend removing McAfee or similar if it is installed.

    All these things will help, it just depends on how much.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,958 ✭✭✭DopeTech


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    That's the one. Hmmm. Looks like I got done, going by that price.

    Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.

    Depends what size SSD you want. They are more expensive than old HDDs but offer much better performance. Memory is relatively cheap. A clean install of windows 10 would help too to remove any bloatware that came with it. I found Avast made windows 10 sluggish the last time I used it. Those pc tune up apps can also impact performance rather than improve it alot of the time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 699 ✭✭✭jhud


    You have to make sure you have only one antivirus(av) having 2 can really cripple even a high end machine. So if using Avg make sure McAfee or norton or the likes is not installed this would need to be removed\uninstalled. But same as other advice computer will be slow but reducing startup apps and doing this can save you buying the upgrade but to be honest windows is just ok on 4gb really needs 6-8gb and hard drive will be slow ssd hard drive will really improve things on this.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    I'm using 3 laptops with similar CPU performance, one with 3GB and two with 2GB. The big difference is the hard drive. All mine have a SSD or a eMMC the latter is a good bit slower. All are a lot faster then a hard drive. Windows 10 hammers a hard drive and a regular drive is just too slow anymore except for storage. 4GB is plenty of ram for basic tasks. I have another with 4GB and I never need more than that. Though if I was buying a new machine I'd try to get 8GB, just for future proofing.

    You need a SSD. End of story.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    HeidiHeidi wrote: »
    ...Would I be better cutting my losses, try to flog it and start again? How much would "the above" be likely to cost me? I don't want to throw good money after bad.

    Its not that bad....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,869 ✭✭✭✭fritzelly


    You say you bought it new - are you sure it was new?
    Wouldn't even consider a laptop that had a processor older than i5 - the one you have is 2 years old
    As someone else said remove AVG - pointless, MS's own AV is more than adequate
    Malware and other crap installed all have an effect on the speed - is this a stock Toshiba OS install? Or have you got lots of stuff, you never look at, running - what does Task Manager tell you is running/what is listed under the Start-Up tab? Have a good luck thru the Add/Remove programs part of Settings

    Think you got bummed on that price for an old laptop


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    fritzelly wrote: »
    ...Wouldn't even consider a laptop that had a processor older than i5 - the one you have is 2 years old...

    Thats a meaningless statement. The first i5s are from 2009. There probably 100 different models of i5.

    The N3700 is ok CPU. Its just a very low energy one designed for low powered devices like netbooks. They also stick it in budget laptops. Its basically the latest version of the atom family that they renamed Pentium and Celeron for marketing reasons.

    http://laptopmedia.com/review/intel-pentium-n3700-review-the-budget-braswell-family-is-here/

    No matter what machine. You need a SSD to get the best out of Windows 10 and any browser. Since the browser caches to the hard drive regardless of how much RAM.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,048 ✭✭✭✭HeidiHeidi


    Thanks everyone for all the advice (about 10% of which I actually understand!)

    A VERY kind boardsie came along last night and helped me clean up a surprising amount of crap from the machine, reinstalled a lot of stuff and generally cleaned up the set-up. Seems to be running smoother and quicker already from just that.

    I'm going to see how all that has improved performance before I do anything else.

    Like I say, I'm not looking for a gaming-quality super-computer, just something that does what I need it to do (not a lot, really).

    Thanks again to everyone for the time and advice :)

    (And I'll definitely be coming here before purchasing next time!)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,593 ✭✭✭theteal


    Great to hear a clean out helped - this is why some us recommended a clean install of Windows, even if you kept the mechanical drive

    Anyway, the SSD will be your real solution. It'll take a little bit if work/time installing Windows (you'll see how easy it is at the end, just time consuming) but its safe to say you won't be short of a bit if help in here.


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