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Slow laptop

My boss has a laptop that is so slow.  He then went out bought another one and asked me to basically wipe it out and toss it. 


I restored it back to the factory setting and it is still so slow. I also did "chkdsk" to check the hdd, but still. What could be the other causes?  thanks

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☠ MASQ ☠

Do you have a make/model?

Also depends on the price, most laptops under 500 bucks are slow from the start (traditional hard disk, extremely low cpu, low memory)

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It is a Intel i5-8250U 1.6G

RAM 8G

HDD 1T


It will take long time to open any program or to download any files. On the other hand, once a browser is opened, YouTube is playing fine, so as other sites. thanks

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Something like the Lenovo 330?

If you can hear noise when the HDD is accessed then you've a 5400 rpm mechanical drive in there that's likely to be the biggest bottleneck in performance.
It should be pretty easy to find a 1TB Solid state drive for around $70.
It it were the Lenovo then a RAM upgrade to max out the machine would be around another $60
The rest of the speed improvements would be tweaking settings - and a clean Win 10 install as described rather than a reinstallation of the Lenovo image
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How can I do the clean install? I do not have the USB media and the key. thanks

Was the install provided by the manufacturer (OEM)?  If so you don't need to find an activation key.
The "Gotcha" here is if it's running the company's version of Windows rather than a retail or OEM copy.

We can talk you through making a usb memory stick that will do a clean install but there are a few things to line up first, one of which is how Windows is currently activated on the laptop (WinKey+I > Updates and Security > Activation).

You also need to choose what you're going to install to, the current 5400 rpm HDD or a new SSD.

Download Microsoft Media Creation Tool from here (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10), get an 8GB USB stick, and run the tool to create bootable media. Then boot from this USB key and install Windows.


Regarding the key... If the laptop came preinstalled, the license is probably embedded/stored in UEFI firmware.

Anyway, you can run the below to see the product key:

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

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You can clone the laptop's drive in a workstation.
If you are lucky, the laptop has roo. For two drives, in which case you can clone within the laptop
Theb take other hddandswap the ssd on its stead.
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Thank you all.


the installation is OEM. Based on EEs, I should not have to worry about the key. As for HDD, I will stay with 5400, this laptop will be a spared laptop if I could fix it.


Again, thank you very much

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UPDATE:

I redid the hdd partition and did a clean installation,  everything is good now. thank you all.