Very Slow laptop

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  1. enfield250
    Posts : 68
    windows 10
       New #1

    Very Slow laptop


    Hello!
    A few years ago I purchased a Toshiba Satellite C50D-A-13X laptop second hand.
    The laptop was described as new unused, but upgraded to Win10 Home.
    I realised before I purchased the laptop that it wasn't the fastest on the block.
    It has an AMD E1 2100 CPU running at 1GHz.
    4Gb ram
    750Gb HDD.
    Win10 Home 20H2 19042.789
    It was from the day I got it rather slow, but It has gradually got slower and slower.
    It takes an age to launch a program, but once launched it's fine.
    Yesterday I downloaded Seatools for Windows and ran all the tests. The disk passed all tests.
    I left it running Windows Disk Optimisation which was very slow, so I left it all night.
    This morning it had optimised the C drive and it appeared faster.
    I then started to remove programs that I no longer required, this was a slow process and afterwards the laptop was really slow again. I performed a restart an ran the Windows Disk Optimisation again, this time it was quicker only took an hour to complete. I looked at the Windows Disk Management and noticed that the disk has three recovery partitions as well as the two usable partitions "C" & "D". One of the recovery partitions is shown as EFI recovery.
    Any ideas what could be wrong, please?

    - - - Updated - - -

    I have now been given a message " Windows will update out of hours" restart now. I have restarted and I now have a blue screen with the words "Preparing to configure windows Don't turn off your computer" nothing else on the screen apart from the cursor, the cursor will not move. Help!!!
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  3. wiganken
    Posts : 565
    Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
       New #2

    Just let it run until it finishes updating and that will probably fix it.
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  4. spunk
    Posts : 4,818
    Windows 11 Pro 64 Bit 22H2
       New #3

    The hidden EFI partition is part of the new GPT Initialized format HDD in a UEFI Bios, as opposed to the older MBR Initialization, that is normal.
    Since the laptop was Used a Few Years ago, then the HDD must be several years old and aging and it it is in the beginning stages of Failing, The drive needs to be replaced with a SSD drive which will really improve the speed. Right now you can stay with the Updates until they finish. I would backup any files you want to keep to an External USB HDD.
    If you want to confirm the HDD needs replacing from another source, download DiskGenius in my signature. Select your disk and go to the Toolbar to Disk/View SMART Information. This will give you a quick snapshot of the health or your drive. You also can go to View or Repair Bad Sectors. This will take a lot longer. this will create a map of the Bad Sectors, if there are more then a couple, you can stop the test, that confirms the drive needs to be replaced.
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  6. enfield250
    Posts : 68
    windows 10
    Thread Starter
       New #4

    Spunk,
    Thanks for the insight.
    I have installed Disk Genius at present I'm running verify it's been going for 20mins done 10% found 8 normal, 1 general, 1100 good & 9000 excellent. Going to take another 2hrs 55mins.
    Cheers,

    - - - Updated - - -

    I have finished running Disk Genius the results were:
    Excellent 72114
    Good 19071
    Normal 16
    General 1
    Poor 0
    Severe 0
    Damaged 0

    I have now tried to use the recovery partitions to go back to day one.
    The manual says hold the "0" key down as the machine powers up, I've tried that the screen stays black.
    As soon as I release the "0" key the machine fires up into windows, getting silly now.
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  7. FreeBooter
    Posts : 5,333
    Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
       New #5

    How to Factory Reset a Toshiba Laptop
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  8. MadRocker
    Posts : 8
    Win 10, Linux, OSX
       New #6

    Good day Enfield250

    1. With 4gb ram you should look at in 10 1709 as highest Win10 version, as it does not have this extra burden of 20h* bloatware versions = Built for 8-16gb ram, 4+ cores, HDD / SSD minm. specs in reality.

    2. 750gb HD yes it is slow possibly 50mb/s or if lucky Hitachi runs at +/-130mb/s on a good day.
    So basically USB3 speeds or below USB3 speeds. Not a bad thing, just see the reality of what you are working with / trying to overload the hardware with.

    3. AMD E1 2100 CPU 1ghz maybe Win8.1 or Win7 or Linux capable at max in reality.

    Cheap and nasty fix:
    You can cheat by using a USB as your bootable drive, there is way to install Windows 10 on a USB Sandisk Extreme Pro USB 64gb (240mb/s x 140mb/s) as example and it should boot faster that the 750gb HDD, then use that as a storage drive.
    Or
    Ventoy USB + USB stick and drop a Win10XPE iso on the USB, and boot from that.
    4gb Ram will work but too low in reality for Win10 any installed versions.

    Win10:
    If possible or viable add more ram if you want to run Win10 on this machine. Cut Win10 down to bare essentials loading nearly nothing or a 10 PE version.
    AMD CPU is likely soldered on, so no option to upgrade it.
    Yes SSD or if it has a NVME M.2 or OLDER MSATA slot you can squeeze a bit more life out of this laptop / upgrade with newer faster 550mb/s+ SSD etc...

    In Reality that laptop is Win8.1 capable and should run decent with Win8.1 or Win7. Wish I could go back to Win7 vs Win10
    Win10 is overloading that laptop as is or even if updating some hardware.

    Imagine that hardware +Win10 is equivalent of a human carrying a Win10 Elephant or Car on your shoulders.
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  9. enfield250
    Posts : 68
    windows 10
    Thread Starter
       New #7

    Thanks, for the help.
    I have ordered a 240Gb SSD to see if that makes things better.
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  10. cereberus
    Posts : 15,498
    Windows10
       New #8

    Whilst an ssd will help, nothing can fundamentally help when it comes to a slow CPU.
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  12. Megahertz
    Posts : 6,392
    Windows 11 Pro - Windows 7 HP - Lubuntu
       New #9

    Please post a Disk Manager image. Full window and expand the columns so we can read them.
    How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management

    Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
    chkdsk c: /f
    It will say your disk is in use and ask if you want to schedule to next start = yes
    Restart
    Pay attention on the results, specially bad blocks, bad clusters, bad sectors etc

    Along the years, the recovery partition has changed position on the drive and recently in size so you may have more than than one that aren't in use any more.
    I would suggest you to buy a small SSD and a caddy to replace the ODD
    Make a backup and do a Clean Install Windows 10 32bits instead of 64bits


    I just refurbished an old HP 450 (i3).
    Bought a new keyboard and battery.
    Replaced the ODD (CD / DVD) with a caddy and installed a small SSD for Windows and programs.
    As it has 4G of memory, reinstalled Win 7 32 bits.

    It boots in seconds and open programs at a blink of an eye.
    20220102 105834 - YouTube
    Last edited by Megahertz; 02 Jan 2022 at 09:43.
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  13. MaloK
    Posts : 2,800
    Windows 7 Pro
       New #10

    Yeah, in Laptops the main bottle neck is the HDD. But Paul is right a lighter 32 bit Version of Windows would be better on that kind of CPU.
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