A computer that takes three minutes to start is not necessarily due for replacement. Here is what we find, in order, when we are called out for a slowdown.
Slowness is by far the most common fault, and the most often misdiagnosed. In the great majority of cases we see in Lyon the machine is not worn out : it is cluttered, badly configured, or fitted with a mechanical hard drive that can no longer keep up with Windows 11. The ten points below run from the most common to the rarest.
This is cause number one, by a wide margin. A conventional hard drive reads about 100 MB per second, an SSD ten to thirty times more. On a machine bought before 2018, or on a more recent entry-level model, the drive spends its time keeping the processor waiting. The telltale sign : the drive activity light stays on continuously, the machine is noisy, and everything is slow - not just one application.
Replacing that drive with an SSD is the single change that transforms a machine most. A startup that took two minutes drops to fifteen seconds. We go through the options in our article SSD or hard drive : which to choose.
Every piece of software installed politely asks to start with Windows. After a few years, twenty or thirty programs are competing for the machine during the first few minutes.
To see the list : right-click the taskbar, Task Manager, Startup apps tab. The "Startup impact" column points to the culprits. Feel free to disable software updaters, printer assistants and media players. Leave your antivirus alone, along with audio and graphics drivers.
Windows needs free space to breathe : page file, updates, temporary files. Below 10% free space on the C: drive, everything slows down noticeably.
Check under This PC. If the bar is red, start with Settings > System > Storage, then Temporary files. Empty the recycle bin too, and the Downloads folder, which often reaches several dozen gigabytes without anyone noticing.
4 GB of RAM is no longer enough for Windows 11 as soon as you open a browser with several tabs. The machine compensates by writing to the drive, which is a hundred times slower. In Task Manager, under Performance, if memory is over 85% used in ordinary work, that is your bottleneck.
Adding memory is often possible on a desktop and on many laptops, at modest cost. On recent laptops, however, the memory is soldered : nothing can be added, and it is worth knowing before you buy.
Not every slowdown comes from a virus, but some do. The unmistakable sign : ads appearing outside the browser, a home page you did not choose, unfamiliar toolbars. See our article on removing a virus under Windows 11.
A classic. The antivirus that came with the machine expires, the owner installs another without removing the first, and the two spend their time scanning each other. One antivirus, always. The one built into Windows does its job properly as long as it is up to date.
When the processor goes past its temperature limit it deliberately slows down to avoid destroying itself. The machine becomes sluggish, the fan runs constantly, the underside of the laptop is hot. The cause is almost always mechanical : dust packed into the heatsink, or a laptop sitting on a bed or a sofa that blocks the vents.
A thorough dust removal, and new thermal paste on a machine more than five years old, often give back fifteen to thirty percent of its performance.
If the slowness only affects the internet, this is where it comes from. Twenty extensions, forty open tabs and a cache that has never been cleared are enough to bog down any machine. Go through your extensions : keep the ones you actually use, remove the rest.
After a long spell with the machine switched off, Windows downloads and installs in the background. The slowness is then normal and temporary : leave the machine on and connected for an hour or two. If it drags on for days, an update is probably stuck and needs attention.
Rarer, but serious : a hard drive nearing the end of its life slows down before it fails, with freezes of several seconds and sometimes a clicking noise. If you hear an unusual sound, stop trying to tune anything : back up your documents immediately. A drive that warns you rarely warns you twice.
Steer clear of "cleaning" and "optimization" software downloaded at random. At best it does nothing, at worst it deletes something useful or installs adware of its own. No tool can make up for a mechanical drive or a shortage of memory.
A diagnosis takes about thirty minutes and tells you exactly what is holding the machine back - and above all whether it is worth spending money on. We work at your home across Lyon and the Rhone, or remotely when the problem allows it.
In most cases it can be repaired. Moving to an SSD and adding memory give a five to eight year old machine several more years of comfortable use, for far less than the cost of replacing it.
A software cleanup and a startup tidy take one to two hours. Replacing a drive with an SSD, including the transfer of all your data, generally takes half a day.
It deals with the software causes, but not with a mechanical drive, a shortage of memory or overheating. That is why a diagnosis before reinstalling often saves a pointless job.
Would you rather we took care of it ? See our computer repair at home service, in Lyon and across the Rhone.
Free diagnosis, at your home or remotely, in Lyon and the Rhone.
Automatic assistant: it can make mistakes. Never share a password or a card number.
