Sluggish laptop -- any suggestions?

I have a year-old HP Spectre x360 laptop, 15-ch0xx. It has an Intel i7-8705g 3.10GHz CPU and 16GB RAM. Win10 Version 1903, build 18362.418.

So it's a reasonably capable system -- and yet it is often/usually very sluggish. Hit the Windows key and it sometimes takes 5 seconds or more to display the popup window. I just started Quicken and it took 20 seconds to come up. Web pages often take 20 or more seconds to render, even though a speedtest.net check says I have 100Mbps with 20ms ping.

It just feels clunky and slow much of the time. Sometimes it gets really bad, and I have to reboot. That generally helps.

When it's doing this, typically nothing special is running. It might be at 10% CPU use until I try to do something "difficult" like launching Quicken. I haven't noticed any signs of thrashing, and often there is 4-6GB free when this happens. I can't understand why it's responding so slowly.

Any suggestions? Any way to speed it up, or any ideas of things to monitor to find out what's going on?

Thanks!

Do you know about running an SFC or DISM?

I ran sfc /scannow -- no issues.

What do I do with DISM? Sounds like I need to do a full backup before I do that.

1) Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:
2) sfc /scannow
3) dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
4) dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
5) sfc /scannow
6) chkdsk /scan
7) wmic recoveros set autoreboot = false
8) wmic recoveros set DebugInfoType = 7
9) bcdedit /enum {badmemory}

10) When these have completed > right click on the top bar or title bar of the administrative command prompt box > left click on edit then select all > right click on the top bar again > left click on edit then copy > paste into the thread

11) Place the computer in clean boot:
Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

12) Maintain clean boot for several days.
Report into the thread changes in boot and performance.

13) Download and install HP hardware diagnostics Windows:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers...Id/ob-227963-1
Run the extensive tests overnight.
In the AM run the component tests (some are interactive)
Post images of the results into the thread.

Take Screenshot in Windows 10

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Use Autoruns to check / disable stuff you don't need to run. Check your maximum CPU state is 100% under power options

zbook said:

10) When these have completed > right click on the top bar or title bar of the administrative command prompt box > left click on edit then select all > right click on the top bar again > left click on edit then copy > paste into the thread

Looks pretty clean...

Code:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.418](c) 2019 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>sfc /scannow


Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.


Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.


Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth


Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.18362.1


Image Version: 10.0.18362.418


[==========================100.0%==========================] No component store corruption detected.
The operation completed successfully.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth


Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.18362.1


Image Version: 10.0.18362.418


[==========================100.0%==========================] The restore operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>sfc /scannow


Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.


Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.


Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk /scan
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Windows.


Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
  848896 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  10087 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.


Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
  1388 reparse records processed.
  1025306 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
  1388 reparse records processed.


Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
  88206 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  33631120 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.


Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.


 984177663 KB total disk space.
 561151704 KB in 676460 files.
    369296 KB in 88207 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    985935 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 421670728 KB available on disk.


      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 246044415 total allocation units on disk.
 105417682 allocation units available on disk.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>wmic recoveros set autoreboot = false
Updating property(s) of '\\SPECTRE\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_OSRecoveryConfiguration.Name="Microsoft Windows 10 Pro|C:\\WINDOWS|\\Device\\Harddisk0\\Partition3"'
Property(s) update successful.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>wmic recoveros set DebugInfoType = 7
Updating property(s) of '\\SPECTRE\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_OSRecoveryConfiguration.Name="Microsoft Windows 10 Pro|C:\\WINDOWS|\\Device\\Harddisk0\\Partition3"'
Property(s) update successful.


C:\WINDOWS\system32>bcdedit /enum {badmemory}


RAM Defects
-----------
identifier              {badmemory}


C:\WINDOWS\system32>

Looks good.

There were no findings of

operating system corruption
component store corruption
drive file system corruption

When available please update with the other steps in post #4.

I ran the extensive RAM test for 12 hours last night. No errors.

I'm running in Clean Boot state now. I'll run with that for a few days and let you know if I notice a big difference.

Please post Images for all test results into the thread.

If there is a text report please include that with the images.


Take Screenshot in Windows 10

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For the extensive RAM test, there weren't really any "results" to post. It just kept running without error.

There may be a log file in the UEFI environment, but I haven't figured out yet how to get it into Windows.