Frustrating Laptop Problem
Discussion
Dell Inspiron, Intel i7 5500U.
If I use Crome (which I do) with more than one tab open, or Excel with more than one file open, whenever I close a rab, or a spreadhseet, I get "Not Responding" for four of five seconds afterwards. It closes whatever I closed, but then won't do anything for that few seconds. It's really frustrating, and I can't work out why it's doing it.
CPU, disk and memory are all running at 15-25%, and the only other thing I have open, generally, is Outlook. Which doesn't hang. And Avast.
Any ideas?
If I use Crome (which I do) with more than one tab open, or Excel with more than one file open, whenever I close a rab, or a spreadhseet, I get "Not Responding" for four of five seconds afterwards. It closes whatever I closed, but then won't do anything for that few seconds. It's really frustrating, and I can't work out why it's doing it.
CPU, disk and memory are all running at 15-25%, and the only other thing I have open, generally, is Outlook. Which doesn't hang. And Avast.
Any ideas?
HRL said:
SSD or HDD? If HDD, try a defrag if it’s not already scheduled or better yet, remove it and replace it with an SSD for a new lease of life.
A quick Google suggests it has a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, HDD. I also have an XPS with an SSD, and that doesn't have this issue.A quick Google suggests it has a 1TB HDD.
I'll disble the virus checker then do a clean up and defrag, and check performance at each step.
Is there a piece of software I can use to measure the 'hang time'?, so I can see what works.
Doofus said:
Is there a piece of software I can use to measure the 'hang time'?, so I can see what works.
Procmon will do that, you can download it from Microsoft, it's does provide a s
tload of info though which takes some filtering in order to see what is actually relevant Have a look at Process Explorer too, also downloadable from MS
Mr Pointy said:
Have you tired a different browser? Just one more thing to eliminate.
I've tried Firefox, but that has all kinds of other issues, which is why I switched to Chrome a couple of years ago. Occasionally, I accidentally open Edge, but that takes at least three minutes to even open.To answer your actual question, I haven't tried to replicate the problem with another browser, no. But then again, it happens with Excel too.
Doofus said:
HRL said:
SSD or HDD? If HDD, try a defrag if it’s not already scheduled or better yet, remove it and replace it with an SSD for a new lease of life.
A quick Google suggests it has a 1TB HDD.
Yeah, HDD. I also have an XPS with an SSD, and that doesn't have this issue.A quick Google suggests it has a 1TB HDD.
I'll disble the virus checker then do a clean up and defrag, and check performance at each step.
Is there a piece of software I can use to measure the 'hang time'?, so I can see what works.
Doofus said:
HRL said:
Get it swapped out for an SSD.
Overkill, given what the machine needs to do.. As I said, I do have an XPS with an SSD as well.Don't forget how bloated Windows (and Chrome as mentioned) has become. For the sake of a £40 SSD I wouldn't be f
king about - stick one in there and have done with it...Funk said:
Doofus said:
HRL said:
Get it swapped out for an SSD.
Overkill, given what the machine needs to do.. As I said, I do have an XPS with an SSD as well.Don't forget how bloated Windows (and Chrome as mentioned) has become. For the sake of a £40 SSD I wouldn't be f
king about - stick one in there and have done with it...Doofus said:
Funk said:
Doofus said:
HRL said:
Get it swapped out for an SSD.
Overkill, given what the machine needs to do.. As I said, I do have an XPS with an SSD as well.Don't forget how bloated Windows (and Chrome as mentioned) has become. For the sake of a £40 SSD I wouldn't be f
king about - stick one in there and have done with it...Age of the drive isn't always an indicator (I've had HDDs fail straight out of the box!) but on an older drive it'll likely start encountering bad sectors etc. It's not an exact science and even though you think it's had 'light' use a drive is constantly reading/writing in the background - the applications you run and files you open are a part of that overall.
If you're going the investigative route I wouldn't start with a defrag; if the drive has issues then that's only going to make it worse. Start with a diskcheck (Start > CMD (run as admin) > chkdsk c: /r) which will trigger a scan at the next reboot. This will check for (and if possible, recover) bad sectors on the hard drive. It'll tell you in the summary if it found any issues. If none then by all means try the defrag although the benefit of this would be minor imo.
Avast can be very naggy - to be honest Windows Defender (assuming you're on Win10) is decent enough of its own so I would ditch Avast completely. I don't normally recommend things like CCleaner but it's one I've found that will clear clutter out of the registry without causing myriad other issues. You could also run a Disk Cleanup on the C:\ including system files which will clear some space too (especially legacy gunk from Windows updates).
I appreciate where you're at but you asked for help and mostly I think an SSD would solve it. A clone and swap will probably take less time and hassle than all the troubleshooting steps you're about to take and there's never been a machine I've seen that hasn't benefited from an SSD.
Your call and good luck with it either way.
If you're going the investigative route I wouldn't start with a defrag; if the drive has issues then that's only going to make it worse. Start with a diskcheck (Start > CMD (run as admin) > chkdsk c: /r) which will trigger a scan at the next reboot. This will check for (and if possible, recover) bad sectors on the hard drive. It'll tell you in the summary if it found any issues. If none then by all means try the defrag although the benefit of this would be minor imo.
Avast can be very naggy - to be honest Windows Defender (assuming you're on Win10) is decent enough of its own so I would ditch Avast completely. I don't normally recommend things like CCleaner but it's one I've found that will clear clutter out of the registry without causing myriad other issues. You could also run a Disk Cleanup on the C:\ including system files which will clear some space too (especially legacy gunk from Windows updates).
I appreciate where you're at but you asked for help and mostly I think an SSD would solve it. A clone and swap will probably take less time and hassle than all the troubleshooting steps you're about to take and there's never been a machine I've seen that hasn't benefited from an SSD.
Your call and good luck with it either way.
Crystal Disk info from here https://crystalmark.info/en/download/#CrystalDiskI...
this will read the SMART data and demonstrate very quickly if the disk is on it's way out, It sounds like it is.
As recommended an SSD will almost certainly make everything better.
this will read the SMART data and demonstrate very quickly if the disk is on it's way out, It sounds like it is.
As recommended an SSD will almost certainly make everything better.
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