Acer Aspire ES 15 Series super slow

moonweez
moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
edited September 2023 in 2019 Archives
Acer Aspire ES 15 Series ES1-572-33BP 15.6" Laptop, Windows 10 Home, Intel Core i3-7100U Processor, 4GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive

I've had this since June 2017. I don't store much on it. It slowed just a few months after I bought it. I've factory reset it a couple of times which improves speed only for a week or two. What can I do?
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Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Uninstall, don't just disable, any non-Microsoft antivirus scanners. Microsoft Defender and Malicious Software Removal tool is all you need and are automatically installed. If you perform another re-set, please note approximately when it starts slowing down again because we can try to use Control Panel 'create a restore point' app to determine the cause. Accordingly please make sure 'system protection' is turned on in the 'create a restore point' app. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Thank you. Turns out from my last factory reset I never re-installed AVG. So, there has been no other antivirus on there for a couple of months at least. This is an interesting discovery . . . I brought the laptop to work with me today to work on this. So far speed has not been a problem and things aren't freezing/sticking for 10 minutes while a page struggles to load like at home! Any insight about that?
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Open Device Manager when you get home. Click Network Adapters folder. Right click the WIFI adapter. Click 'properties'. Click 'advanced' tab. Click 'preferred band'. If 'no preference' is listed, try 2.4GHz first. If no joy, then try 5GHz. If either 2.4 or 5 is listed, try 'no preference' or the other band. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    This is so strange. Since I had the thing at work and then brought it home it's been behaving fine. It hasn't worked well at all in over a year! I will go through your steps too. 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Try to find out if work is either operating on the 5GHz or 2.4GHz band. Then you can change it at home. It's not unusual for the automatic preferred band to get messed up like this particularly for routers that are ~5 years old. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    I can't believe I've been fighting with this computer for this long and it wasn't the computer, lol. Wish I had some here sooner (duh).  I have the setting on 2.4 and so far so good. Thank you very much JackE!!
  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Spoke to soon apparently. It's back to its old tricks. Takes Chrome pages forever to load/unstick. Screen first stays white for a while with favorites and address bar visible on top. Then screen turns black with white banner in place of address/favorites bar. Then screen goes back to white and eventually tabs become functional. iTunes loading and switching into Store pretty slow as well. I've had it on 2.4g. Didn't try it for long on 5g because when I initially compared them, 2.4 was better. I didn't go back to 5g last night because getting into the settings was also painfully slow. The gear would appear but froze for a very long time when clicking on it. Cortana also not functioning unless I wait several minutes.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Open Task  Manager. Watch  CPU, HDD & Network usage for several minutes while you're doing nothing and the system is supposed to be idling. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    If idling means there is no activity at all, that's not happening.  I attached screen capture for all 3 after letting them run for several minutes each. There were a couple of times when Network screens were blank, but this is what they all looked like in general.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Looks good. Now what happens to TaskManager when you fire up chrome and start loading pages. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Task Manager usually functions fine. In fact I often start that up to try to kick Chrome out of its freeze. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It never indicates that Chrome is not responding. (Is that what you mean by what happens to Task Manager?) Other than that I don't know what the workings of all the processing means so I wouldn't be able to tell just be looking if something is running slower than it should be. If that makes any sense.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    I'm looking for CPU and Disk usage in TaskManager when Chrome is loading pages slowly? Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    Ok. I have the device with me today at work and it's working fine. I'll see if it acts up again at home and will try to capture that processing.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    OK. I'm also interested in seeing if the RAM memory usage in TaskManager starts to rise when things start to slow down. Jack E/NJ 

    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    I can't say if this happens every time but yesterday it was working fine in the morning. I left it for a few hours and when I came back everything was frozen and was slow again. Task manager was slow to open as well but seemed to eventually kick things out of the frozen state. I have noticed it doesn't seem to matter if I close the laptop or leave it open. 
     
  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    To clarify, I mean when I come back to use the device after I have left it for a few hours, it doesn't seem to matter if I've left it open or if I've closed it. I used to wonder if closing it put it into a hibernation mode and that's why it was getting stuck. So far today the speed is fine.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    OK, for less trouble, I think you want your ControlPanel power button and power plan apps to look like below. No hibernation mode anywhare. Jack E/NJ



    Jack E/NJ

  • moonweez
    moonweez Member Posts: 30 Enthusiast WiFi Icon
    My settings match this. I assumed some sort of hibernation was happening when I closed the lid. Sleep I guess it's called.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,330 Trailblazer
    Hibernation mode is actually a shut off, not sleep mode. In theory, hibernation creates a file (hiberfil.sys) with all the current RAM and HDD settings before it shuts the machine completely off. Then on turning the machine back on, the boot process looks at hiberfil.sys and is supposed to load all the previous settings before it turned off. In theory. In theory sometimes doesn't work in practice.   :) Jack E/NJ  

    Jack E/NJ

  • Dummytest97
    Dummytest97 Member Posts: 33

    Tinkerer

    i got this problem before , always 100% disk usage,and solution is to change to SSD and your problem gone once and for all. trust me its working.