Acer A315-21-42DP slowness issue

Apotius

Hi everybody!

Bought few weeks ago an Acer A315-21-42DP. First had issues of installing Windows to it from a memory stick. It had Linux installed. Base problem was old BIOS. Updating it and Windows 10 update was easy.

Now experiencing slowness. Really this system cannot be so slow as it seems. Base memory is 4 GB and I've put 8 GB more so have now 12 GB. 

Everything is working rather slowly. I would say it is as slow as my mother's almost 10 years old laptop that I upgraded having an SSD disk. 

Slowness has been all the time no matter what memory or driver versions. 

Some info from msinfo32:

Version 10.0.19043 Build 19043 (Windows Pro version)

Processor AMD A4-9120 RADEON R3, 4 COMPUTE CORES 2C+2G, 2200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

System Model Aspire A315-21

SMBIOS Version 3.0

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 12,0 GB

Additionally: Micron 1100 MTFDDAV256TBN with Current Firmware M0MA020 (seems latest)

Also interesting when doing upgrades to windows I used LAN port. For some reason link is on for a while and then it just isn't on changing to Wifi. Also tried two different cables. For that reason I updated the LAN driver to latest version being 10.51.811.2021. No help. Suspected my old repeater (although it worked nicely with my intelligent TV by providing the channel data meaning around 10 Mb constant load). Replaced that with a Zyxel Wifi router. No help. That however is not a big problem since I mostly use my laptop with Wifi but any suggestion is welcomed.

When I say slow seems it is doing a lot of CPU work and because of that just can't get things done quickly. Disk I/O seems not to be the issue. Just installed Micron disk's rather big admin program. During the installation disk I/O was very small like 2-3 % but CPU was almost all the time 100 %. (Have Task Manager snapshot of it during the installation.)

I am using rather much memory by having like 40 tabs on my chrome session but I also have 12 GB memory so chrome seems to fit nicely. Is the CPU just not so powerful that I would like it to be? I'm not doing any CPU consuming programs. Just basic office work and using chrome mostly and occasional Microsoft Office programs. Startup from scratch takes quite a long time and even from sleep. I can time it if someone has timed their startup time. Even takes quite much time just to be able to put my password in. 

ttttt

@Apotius

Hard to imagine in the year 2021 people are still selling this type of PC new (assuming you bought it new). 

The AMD A4-9120 is very weak CPU by today's standard. The benchmark is typical to that of 10-15 years old PC.

The Radeon R3 graphics is also very weak, also like those used in PCs more than a decade old.

Are you still using the old style 2.5" spinning  SATA HDD as the boot drive? If so, it will  be another thing pulling your feet. These are all slowness combinations.

No wonder you said your mother's ten year old PC is faster.

If you open up the Windows 10 Task Manger, check the Performance tab and look at CPU and Disk sections, I'll bet the CPU is running close to 100%, but memory usage is still very reasonable with a lot of reserve.

The best thing you can do is to change the boot drive to a 2.5" SATA3 SSD, that will help the speed somewhat.

If you do more Windows updates, maybe the Lan driver's problem will be solved.

If you want a good value laptop, I'll recommend the one I bought several months ago (A515-46-R14K).