Laptop sometimes slow-mos for a second

Hello, I have this weird problem with my laptop: sometimes, randomly, everything slows down to a crawl for more or less a second. And I mean really everything, audio, video, inputs. I’m trying to find a source of this problem.
The machine is the one on my profile. It has a sata m.2 ssd, 500MB/s r/w. I'm running w10 2004 19041.264, and I had the same problem with 1909, 1903.

I've tried:
sfc
dism
updating windows
updating graphics drivers
updating chipset drivers
changing audio card drivers

theSyd said:

Hello, I have this weird problem with my laptop: sometimes, randomly, everything slows down to a crawl for more or less a second. And I mean really everything, audio, video, inputs. I’m trying to find a source of this problem.
The machine is the one on my profile. It has a sata m.2 ssd, 500MB/s r/w. I'm running w10 2004 19041.264, and I had the same problem with 1909, 1903.

You could have a look at the Event Viewer. Search Event Viewer from the taskbar, look in Custom Views/Administrative Events. This will display all errors and warnings with a timestamp, other pertinent details and possibly a hint at where the issue is located.

W10 Tweaker said:

You could have a look at the Event Viewer. Search Event Viewer from the taskbar, look in Custom Views/Administrative Events. This will display all errors and warnings with a timestamp, other pertinent details and possibly a hint at where the issue is located.

I’ve tried to keep an eye on the correlation between the slowdown and windows maintained, and they don’t seem to match. Also I have an ssd, so defrag should not be it, and trimming never slowed down any machine I’ve owned.

RoadBlaster said:

Is your bios up to date ?

HUAWEI MateBook D 14 AMD: Quick Start Guide, FAQs and software downloads | HUAWEI Support UK

As this is for Win10 Versions 1903 & higher

My laptop version is actually the older one, w00, and I have the latest bios available, 1.22.

___

I’ve tried changing the ssd with a nvme one (3000r/2500w), and it had no effect on the slowdowns.

I guess the next thing I’ll try will be a clean windows install, as soon as I find some free time.

theSyd said:

I guess the next thing I’ll try will be a clean windows install, as soon as I find some free time.

There are a few things you might investigate before committing to a clean install.

1) Check the start tab on the task manager. Look to see how many third party apps (non-microsoft) are running.

2) Post screenshots of the task manager with the processes tab selected, with the cpu column sorted high to low. Post the first screenshot 3-5 minutes after a restart and a second while a slowdown is happening, if possible. Use Fn+Print Screen keys to quickly capture the image and then paste into paint or another preferred app.







3) Perform a clean boot and see if the PC slows down again. This will isolate the problem to a third-party app and then you can start adding in groups of apps slowly in order to identify the specific app causing your grief.

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

W10 Tweaker said:

There are a few things you might investigate before committing to a clean install.

1) Check the start tab on the task manager. Look to see how many third party apps (non-microsoft) are running.

2) Post screenshots of the task manager with the processes tab selected, with the cpu column sorted high to low. Post the first screenshot 3-5 minutes after a restart and a second while a slowdown is happening, if possible. Use Fn+Print Screen keys to quickly capture the image and then paste into paint or another preferred app.







3) Perform a clean boot and see if the PC slows down again. This will isolate the problem to a third-party app and then you can start adding in groups of apps slowly in order to identify the specific app causing your grief.

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

I've already tried to monitor what's happening with task manager, and I didn't really notice anything strange during the slowdowns. I'll try to see again, maybe I missed something.

Anyway I just discovered there's a "secret" update for the bios, with the same version number but with a different build date. I guess I'll try that as well.

If these fail, I'll try a clean boot.

W10 Tweaker said:

You could have a look at the Event Viewer. Search Event Viewer from the taskbar, look in Custom Views/Administrative Events. This will display all errors and warnings with a timestamp, other pertinent details and possibly a hint at where the issue is located.

I don’t know how I missed this post, this information is actually really useful, thank you

theSyd said:

I don’t know how I missed this post, this information is actually really useful, thank you

You're most welcome. There's lots of valuable info in there.

Performing a clean boot is relatively simple and can be quite definitive, if a third-party app is the source of the problem.

A little update: I’ve tried disabling BitLocker, and doing an in place reinstall, to no avail.
Task manager shows nothing with high cpu usage during the slowdowns, and event viewer shows no error of any kind at that timestamp. I’ve noticed that the slowdowns happen at >85% of ram usage usually. So it might have something to do with swapping. Anyway, as soon as I’m a bit more free I’ll try to tinker with a clean boot.