Laptop is running very slow. Morbidly slow

I bought my laptop 3 years ago and never had an issue with it. It’s a 2014 ASUS X550LD with Windows 10 Professional powered by a 'staggering' 2 Cores-4 Threads Intel Core i7-4510U 2.00GHz (up to 3.1GHz Turbo Boost).

It’s been working fine… until the beginning of June. For some totally unexpected reasons, this piece of technology runs unbelievably slow. I waste 10 entire minutes waiting for it to boot up, another 8 minutes just to open up something like Microsoft Edge and some others just to type something in the search box. It’s outrageous! Not to even mention trying to listen to some music or playing a video game.

Anyway, I did some research and tried many different things, but none of them really work. I’ve cleaned up my drives, checked if there were any viruses, uninstalled any forgotten software and properly cleaned the registry entries and all of that for absolutely no avail. I even gave it a reset once. One day I had the brilliant idea to look up into Task Manager and see if there's something wrong there. And there was!

I found out that my “Speedy Gonzalez” is running at a constant 0.78GHz from its default 2.00GHz CPU frequency for some reason. And even though I try to solve this either by making proper 'High Performance' settings in Power Options or changing to a Performance Profile via ThrottleStop just to try to max it out a little bit, both methods don’t work at all. I’m not for sure if this is the main issue here, but I have to say that it looks the most suspicious.

Therefore, I’m seeking for some help on this honest website and I’d be grateful for anyone’s advice that can help me fix this odd issue.

Screenshot of CrystalDisckInfo report below. And in case you're wondering, the 'Current Pending Sector Count' line is the only issue from that list.

Strafe68

Posted 2017-06-27T20:19:04.053

Reputation: 1

Check that fans are operating and that the heatsink is free of dust and debris, open the laptop up to clean it if you have to. – Mokubai – 2017-06-27T21:06:10.263

I've already did that. My laptop is clean. – Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T07:36:54.530

run crystaldiskinfo and look if the SMART data show any errors

– magicandre1981 – 2017-06-28T14:34:20.977

Well.. I did as you requested and this is out I found: http://imgur.com/a/KMGIy And in case you're wondering, the 'Current Pending Sector Count' line is the only issue from that list.

– Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T17:05:11.233

have you replaced the drive? Is performance good again? – magicandre1981 – 2017-07-08T06:27:01.720

Answers

The high number of Current Pending Sector Count is causing your terrible slow performance.

Current Pending Sector Count S.M.A.R.T. parameter is a critical parameter and indicates the current count of unstable sectors (waiting for remapping). The raw value of this attribute indicates the total number of sectors waiting for remapping. Later, when some of these sectors are read successfully, the value is decreased. If errors still occur when reading some sector, the hard drive will try to restore the data, transfer it to the reserved disk area (spare area) and mark this sector as remapped.

This is a critical parameter. Degradation of this parameter may indicate imminent drive failure. Urgent data backup and hardware replacement is recommended.

So backup your Windows and replace the HDD with a new one. Consider buying a SSD to get a large performance boost over a traditionally HDD.

magicandre1981

Posted 2017-06-27T20:19:04.053

Reputation: 86 560

Make sure ThrottleStop - BD PROCHOT is not checked.

A 10 minute boot up is a sign that something is running on your laptop at start up that probably shouldn't be or your hard drive is getting ready to fail.

Open up the Task Manager and have a look for any processes that look suspicious. If you cannot post pictures of anything, it is going to be difficult for anyone to help you.

Better yet, install a Samsung EVO SSD drive, reinstall Windows and prepare to be blown away. A fast hard drive is more important than a fast CPU when it comes to boot times.

Edit - Your pic shows significant CPU and disk activity. Open the Task Manager and find out what is running on your computer and stop it. An idle computer should have CPU usage close to 0, same with disk activity. It might be Windows 10 in the middle of one of its multi gigabyte updates or it might be a virus like Wannacry that is encrypting your hard drive in the background.

unclewebb

Posted 2017-06-27T20:19:04.053

Reputation: 66

Well, I did manage to rise my CPU frequency up to its default one, but the laptop still works really slow. So it might be, as you said, a problem with the HDD. I took a closer look into Task Manager and it seems that it is constantly operating at an 100% active time. Here's a photo: https://imgur.com/gallery/HGVuS

– Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T07:45:47.733

I might well replace it in the future once I have the required money. – Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T07:47:04.883

x2 on possible HDD issue. If the hard drive is on its way out you could see a slow down. SSD should provide an increase in boot up times and speed regardless.

What build of Windows 10 build are you on? Also if you open Task Manager and look at startup items, anything unnecessary? – LSxCPU – 2017-06-28T15:20:19.137

LSxCPU The 'Winver' page says that I got the Version 1607 and Build 14393.1358 . One thing I should mention is that I went onto the Update History page and it tells me that all the Cumulative Updates for Windows 10 and other utilites released from 28th of June to present have 'failed to install' for some reason. Anyway, the Startup section of Task Manager does not include anything with high impact on startup. I took care of it before and it's all fine there.

< – Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T17:21:17.193

unclewebb (edit) I did as you said and besides the rather common tasks from Nvidia, Adobe, Intel, Windows etc. there isn't much to be found in the Processes tab. It might the cause of ThrottleStop. As for the disk activity, it might be because of the reason that my HDD is really dying out. And that's why I look forward of replacing it with those appealing Seagate hybrids, SSHDs as they call them. Because to be fair, I cannot afford buying a 240Gb SSD, but I do want to rise the performance over the regular HDD's.

< – Strafe68 – 2017-06-28T17:47:54.937