Practical Advice Laptop Help!

[AvidFan]

Can someone offer some advice, practical help or even just a kind word?

Yesterday my laptop started lagging very badly, it seemed to be a combination of an update and low battery state. After a couple of reboots and installs finishing it spontaneously went totally back to normal.

Today it went under 10% again and ever since has been completely laggy, despite me plugging in, the battery charging fully, ensuring power plan is on best performance etc. There is an update running but it's been on 0% for an hour now. I've tried rebooting several times, it takes 5 minutes to boot and then 3 minutes to be able to even open Excel or Edge. It's normally lightning fast. Nothing is hogging system resources or CPU (on 5%), no viruses or malware at least as of yesterday's scan.

I can't really scan now as it's effectively unuseable. I'm trying to get my important work files off onto an external drive in case it fails altogether or I have to do a clean install... or send it back to HP or whatever happens in these cases. But for a few gigs of files Teracopy is currently estimating 48 days to finish.

I'm on my spare laptop at the moment, I have video calls and all sorts later. The camera is fairly poor but it works, I'll have to make do with the rubbish old laptop with dead battery and broken fan for now as it's working 500% better.

Any options before I look at trying to do a system restore? No idea how long that will take. The weird thing is how it spontaneously resolved yesterday, worked for 24 hours, then spontaneously did this again.

With everything else I'm dealing with, I could have done without this. Every time I pick myself back up, I get another gut punch. I've had the odd issue with laptops in the last 5 years but have never had anything like this since I started buying mid range laptops instead of budget models in 2020. The hardware should be breezing through but it isn't.

Anyway, any empathy or compassion or useful tech advice would be welcome about now.

 

[AvidFan]

Update I went back and Teracopy at least had speeded up. So is copying more quickly now and should finish this side of 2025. I tried opening Excel while it was doing that and it took 3 minutes to open. No resource spike in task manager while doing that, so it's not ram or cpu getting clogged by something far as I can tell. WIndows update was still on 0% installing (on my old laptop the updates are happily running in the background without affecting performance) so I've tried pausing them and will reboot again when copying is done. Both HP laptops running Windows 11 and pretty much same software.

 

[AvidFan]

So I've shut down, clean booted, the works, battery is fully charged, mains power on. No reason whatsoever it should be running like treacle.

I've managed to shut down access/module protection on malwarebytes and mcafee and set the restore process going based in a restore point 4 days ago when everything was fine. This might work but not sure if this will fix the BIOS if it's a BIOS or other issue. I know some things about these things but am not an expert, am just trying what I know. The first time I did a system restore in the past, it took 3 hours, and then failed because I hadn't turned off access protection in the AV etc. Learned that lesson. If restore doesn't work I'll have to try a factory reset and if that doesn't work it's still under warranty, but if I have to post it off I will scream. I'll have to buy another one in the meantime. Don't think I'll be buying HP again. ACER are rubbish, HP performed excellently until just now. Hopefully buying a new laptop within 12 months of buying the fucked one will ensure I can work and make a living instead of just fucking me over?

This is all happening when I was at my lowest to start with. Just get the feeling life is kicking me in the nuts at the moment.

 

[1Lefty]

I can't offer you any advice, but I can commiserate
I miss the days when computers were simpler
I hope you'll be able to resolve this problem
I'm sorry life is treating you badly now

peace

 

[AvidFan]

I can't offer you any advice, but I can commiserate
I miss the days when computers were simpler
I hope you'll be able to resolve this problem
I'm sorry life is treating you badly now

peace

Thank you - I don't know how far your memory goes back, this whole thing reminds me that I used to have regularly format my hard drive and clean install Windows ME/XP etc, probably every few months. The amount of times I waited for windows to install and got a blue screen of death after 2 hours.... I thought those days were gone but here I am.

I'm updating while I'm waiting for it to do the restore point. It takes ages at the best of times but if the machine is lagging it could be there for a while.

I've heard of people taking it back to the retailer I got it from and getting a no quibble replacement - but first I need it to function again as it's full of confidential shite. I once interrupted a restore process and it bricked the laptop - but it was a shitty laptop anyway. If worst is worst, I'll use this one or get a new one. Trying not to take things too hard as I've some good news as well today.

 

[SamB]

There is only limited HW debugging you can do:
Is it getting hot, give it a really good feel around and see if there are any hotspots. If it has a fan then is that still working? Whilst it is turned off using a vacuum to suck near any vents to suck out any dust.

Some laptops are capable of working without the battery, if yours is you can try removing the battery and turning on and seeing what happens.

Has any of the hardware gone missing e.g. In the system settings has it detected the amount of RAM it should have?

You could try unscrewing things and checking for loose things but unless you know what you are doing and the laptop is out of warranty then I wouldn’t suggest that.

SW debugging is a lot more complicated and if you have a recent restore point that might be the way to go.

 

[SamB]

Couple of other things you could check.
In task manager is anything using a lot of RAM, disk or network?
A possibility could be a hard disk issue that might impact the swap file performance.
Have you run out of hard disk space?
You could try turning off virtual memory/paging/swap file or whatever windows is calling today.

 

[AvidFan]

Yeah it's only 8 months in so I can't really unscrew or remove battery etc. I'm stuck waiting for this restore to complete. At some point I'll have to assume it's failed and power off with the button, but will leave it a few more hours as it SEEMS to be doing something (circle is spinning, hard drive led flashing at different intervals). I guess if it was running slow to start with, whatever was causing that could be doubling or trebling the restore time. My strategy will basically be try to get back into it, shred all the confidential stuff, then go to the shop with it and explain the situation. But I need to get my work off it first - should have maybe done before the restore thing. Oh well.

 

[AvidFan]

Couple of other things you could check.
In task manager is anything using a lot of RAM, disk or network?
A possibility could be a hard disk issue that might impact the swap file performance.
Have you run out of hard disk space?
You could try turning off virtual memory/paging/swap file or whatever windows is calling today.

No when I looked CPU was at 4% memory at about 70, network at 0. 80GB on the hard drive - can't check anything else while waiting for this damn restore thing to either fail or go through, it feels interminable!

 

[AvidFan]

So I started the restore process about 10am. It's now 12.37 so 2 hrs 37 minutes and counting. No clue if it's stuck or still doing something. How long should I leave it? Obviously can't leave it forever but I've a feeling it should have either failed or succeeded by now. But maybe not.

I once bricked a laptop when I interrupted something like this, but it was only a shitty cloudbook with 32GB mmc storage so it no doubt didn't have any room for recovery files or restore points.... Still scared to interrupt it though I have interrupted one before without consequences. Hopefully it's set up to at least have recovery options if the main installation fails, seeing as they no longer provide a disk etc.

 

[AvidFan]

FFS after 3 hrs 40 minutes I hit the power button. Laptop has come on again so I can get to my stuff. I'll have to try one of the other recovery options now. I fucking hate this. One minute working, the next useless.

 

[AvidFan]

Now Excel won't even open - says it cannot open file. I can't even get into the settings. Going to have try to get into boot menu and try reset option 😥

 

[AvidFan]

Then Excel would open. Very slowly. File explorer is incredibly slow, but my files are copying off onto an external SSD quick enough so hard drive seems fine. Will just delete everything for now before trying reset or reinstall options. If that doesn't work and I have to take it back, I will use eraser to securely delete all empty space before it's out of my hands - probably not completely foolproof but it's better than just leaving the info lying there undeleted on the drive, it's unlikely anyone would use advanced file recovery tools just to see what's on it but I like to do what I can!

 

[AvidFan]

Thank you to anyone who has read, liked or commented. It means a lot to me. I feel so alone so much of the time, especially when I'm dealing with multiple stressors so a place to vent and feel heard is vital for me. You are appreciated, thank you.

 

[AvidFan]

Set the reset PC mode in motion having removed my files for now. If this works I can put them back on. If it doesn't I can securely erase them properly then go back to the shop. If I have reset/reinstalled and it's still painfully slow I don't think there's much more I can do - something has gone wrong somewhere and it's still under guarantee. Just bizarre one minute it's working fine then, slow as shit. Taking 30-40 seconds when I right click to create new folders to bring up context menu, that's just unuseable, no way it would cope with video calls. I printed out the receipt before starting the reset. Maybe it will work.

"This won't take long" is what it says. Sounds like a line from The League of Gentlemen 😆

Thank God I have a spare laptop that functions reasonably well (a bit battered, battery dead, fan wonky, but it works as long as I don't push it too much!)

 

[AvidFan]

I'm on 85% of the reset process. It's an SSD so I'm curious whether it should be taking this long. It went painfully slowly, then from 80-85% quite quick. All will soon be revealed!

 

[AvidFan]

I was wrong - it got from 80 to 83% quite quick but has now been stuck on 83% for half an hour. Something is very wrong with this machine. I have been videoing it stuck on 83% at various intervals as evidence. Jesus mother of God what is going on....

 

[AvidFan]

Sigh. It got to 100% on the black screen (BIOS bit?) which took about 2 hours, now it's on another screen actually installing Windows. At least I think that's what it's doing!

 

[AvidFan]

Been on 4% for quite some time now. 🤔

 

[SamB]

I think you are right that the thing is seriously messed up. It seems more severe than a software issue to me so I would be more inclined to think it is a hardware failure.
Our lives are so entwined with technology these days it feels like a part of us is missing when it fails. I had a power cut not that long ago and during that period I felt really constrained bordering on oppressed, what a strange world we live in!