“My three-years-old Dell Inspiron has been running slow more often recently. When that happens, the whole system froze up randomly. Also, I can hear the fan running out loud when I watch videos on YouTube. Sometimes when the laptop froze, I had to wait 20 seconds or so. Worse yet sometimes I had no choice but force reboot the computer. My Inspiron is with Windows 10, 64 bits.” — from a Dell laptop user
You want to get things done fast, but your Dell laptop just lags. I can feel the disappointment.
You understand over time all computers will run slowly sooner or later, and by then you’ll probably have to buy a new laptop.
If your Dell laptop runs very slow on Windows 10 and it starts to affect your work productivity, it’s time to find the problem and fix it.
Contents
Why is My Dell Laptop so Slow?
There are a number of possible causes out there, and the real reason can vary from case to case.
General slowdowns can be resulted from a lack of hard drive space, running multiple programs at once, malware infection, laptop overheating, etc.
If your Dell is slow while browsing the Internet, it could be the Internet browser you use is too heavy — loaded with too many third-party plugins, caches, and so forth.
If your Dell has been a couple of years old, the main culprit could be outdated hardware — for example, inadequate RAM, hard drive under-performing, etc.
If your Dell laptop is brand new or relatively new, the performance issue is probably related to Windows 10 itself, or a third-party program you just installed.
How to Speed up Dell Laptop
Here are a few fixes in general. The performance increase you can get may vary.
1. Health Check Your Dell Laptop
Viruses and malware can cause your Dell laptop to run slowly as well as some other serious issues.
We recommend getting BitDefender Antivirus Plus and running a thorough scan of your computer to see if you are caught by any viruses or malware.
We recommend this antivirus program because it’s widely viewed as the best antivirus software out there as of this writing.
2. Optimize Windows 10 Startup
If your Dell laptop is brand new, make sure you’ve uninstalled that bloatware that could have been pre-installed on your computer because they are useless most of the time.
Then manage and optimize startup items, i.e. applications or services that automatically boot when you turn on your Dell, you can use the built-in feature called Task Manager on Windows 10 to disable them.
This video shows you how:
3. Clean Dell Laptop Hard Drive
A fragmented or cluttered hard drive can also cause performance issues, especially if you’ve saved tons of files and applications to your Dell laptop main drive.
The more data you store to the main drive, the harder Windows 10 is going to work.
To clean up a PC hard drive, you can use this lightweight app called CleanMyPC to have a quick scan, then it may help you free up a decent amount of disk space by removing system junks, unused programs, and other unnecessary files.
4. Fix Registry Issue
Windows OS has a collection of system files that serve different functions. It’s possible these files become corrupted — with symptoms like annoying Windows errors, registry issues.
To fix that, try CCleaner — a free tool that can quickly find all registry issues in your Dell and cure them once for all.
5. Upgrade Hardware
If your Dell laptop is quite old and you still don’t want to recycle it yet, then it’s probably time to upgrade the hardware.
You’ll get a real performance boost from hardware upgrades.
Need more power to handle software requests? Get an extra 4GB RAM like this.
Is the hard disk drive running slowly? Replace it with an SSD like this.
Final Words
A slow Dell laptop is definitely annoying, and there are plenty of possible causes such as overloaded startup programs, system junks, viruses/malware, outdated hardware, etc.
I hope you’ve fixed the issue your Dell laptop is facing. Don’t forget to back up your PC just in case!
If you have any questions or feedback regarding this topic, feel free to share in the comments.
Kev
Thank you
Badrish Chittora
i am having 2 year old Delhi Inspiron 5000 series Laptop (touch screen). it is working very slow.i have reinstall the os also but stilll issue not resolve taking so much time for start up and also working is very slow… even some time whenever i am typing which is also very slow. need support to resolve the same.
Rosemary Ramanauskas
Brand new out of the box. It is so slow that I can’t work with it. I tried running some diagnostics but they time out,
Randy
There’s little to be done. The windows operating system is a pig. Something is wrong in the original design. You can tell this because in spite of all these tweaks it doesn’t go faster. It’s either in the scheduler or network stack. I also think the entire disk io implementation is poor. The virtual memory is slow and not very good in my opinion. My guess is also due to this poor design there is a lot of single thread processing with lots of wait loops. As a computer engineer I find no logical explanation for poor performance. MS just passes BS out about memory or hard drives for the under informed.
srsly disappointed
wtf no replay? seriously. what a waste of space. nothing new written here
ishwar Bhusal
I wish I had not purchased dell inspiring 3421. I curse the company and my luck everyday.
Vanessa
I have a Dell Inspiron 17 Core i7 and it has run slow ever since I have had it. I purchase new straight from Dell. This laptop has Windows 10 Home Ed. 64 bit Operating system. It doesnt have alot on hard drive as I rarely use it. How do I speed it up?
Gregory Kellerhals
I installed a SSD, and after 4 weeks Dell laptop began running slow.
K.sriharsha
I have suggestion for all of you. Before my laptop is very slow.I’ve researched about this and installed windows 10 super lite by ghost spectate which resulted in maximum speed. And decreased overheating. It fixed many of my issues. You must know about it.
Emmanuel
Mine was also slow and annoying, but all I did was uninstall as many as those junk applications (games especially) that came with it that I am not using. Now it’s super fast!
Ezeh
My two Dell laptops, both core i5 do run slow whenever I install windows 10 on them.
Not just running slow but everything or action performed on them runs with slow motion including videos, refreshing, opening dialog box. Everything!
I need solution please.
I love windows 10 but can’t use it due to this problem.
Brendan du Toit
Here’s more of a message For Dell and others with similar interests and disappointments to read.
My Dell Inspiron 3481 should be ashamed to have even considered landing on a pentium 75 landing site accidentally.
This laptop is so slow that when multitasking and with that I imply running 2 tasks AS A MAXIMUM, has been known to crash this runner up to the old 75’er.
I’m fairly sure I’ve caught this laptop day dreaming and I mean midst way through tasks it arrogantly just refuses to complete any. In sure it was imagining the pace the rest of the world is at and the reason for haste never made itself known In its “notebook”.
I have fortunately purchased a competitor brand and frankly it’s performance is what I expect when I unbox a laptop. To validate a notebooks dire misperformance in notions such as malware purchases and hard drive optimization is a sad excuse to an honest answer of, “it’s not a user error, it’s a shocking Components of mismatch at the expense of us Consumer guinea pigs. We purchase the notebooks, PC’s etc to be told we should still purchase further products to maintain its performance. Instructed to spend thousands on bit defender and the likes thereof, and further time wasted conducting, time consuming nursing on a hard drive ensuring it’s pampered, with just enough bedazzle for the light task at hand….openin, a webpage and Capturing our keystrokes in a document. Many a time I at the very beginning of many “DELL” document Outset’s knew exactly what wording I was going to clothe the document with to deliver an impactful punch, however due to the “lunch breaks” and Timeouts of my/your Dell takes, I tend closing the document dumbstruck, forgetting where I was going with the wording and what the actual reason for me typing it was. The computer is so slow I’ve changed my mind 5 times in the duration it takes to process a simple string.
I did not type this on the Dell, I’d have ended up congratulating you on such a feat of Engineering coming runner up to the
Brad
Its weird because yesterday when playing cod its sort of perfect fps through the roof but today is like 15. I dont know whats causing this. Maybe heat i dont have. An idea
Vinod Dave
Hi Andrew,
I am going to try your suggestions to improve the speed of my Dell 7 years old lap top.
How to add solid state drive on my lap top? Where do you buy and how to install ssd and extra 4 GB Ram? I have very little knowledge of internet language.
Vinod Dave
Los Alamitos
California
Grace Bouchoucha
Thannk you Andreas Louis for your help! I truly appreciate it!
laverne cutrxone
MY computer performance is so slow I lam surprised it runs at all.
Any suggestions that may work that wont cost a fortune???
I need assistance with my SLOW Dell Inspiron 17 500 series.
Or do I just need another brand computer????
J.G. Green
My dell is so slow I’m convinced it’s clockwork. I will never buy dell again. Back to HP.
Sasha
So, I have a relatives Inspiration 13-7378, this system ran fine for about a year after she got it… I have now reloaded fresh windows install 4 times including ince for the new SSD m,2 500GB drive, I removed the mismatched piece of memory. It stone of thi smakes any had 8GB and i7 CPU and a 500GBm.2 SSD SATA WD harddrive…. It had the 8GB memory (single module) i7 CPU and a 500GB SSD m.2 SSD SATA HD. And well nothing seems to help. Does anybody have any idea how much a MB would be, I can’t figure out what exlse it mihght be,,,,
Ron
Well it is a 2,1 ghz but runs at .48
marie bedard
hello in order to type and post and share and read my email i have to right click how can i fix it Its very frustrating thank you
Mary
Good evening
I was wondering what was the useless startup items the are already installed in the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 series?
Since the video link seems to be unavailable
Sher
Sir have tell laptop inspiron model 7352 core i5 5g 4gb and 8gb with Window 10 /64bit run vry slow even you can’t open double Windows in net Google. I replaced the Windows and hard drive but still it’s not working
What should I do
INDRAJEET KUMAR
I have a new Dell vostro 3578 i5 8th generation laptop but it is run very slow wherese no any software running.Beacause I am boot to new windows.
Valentine
Have try some of the things u said but still the system is still slow.
What annoy me most is that the system is core i5 which means it supposed be fast.
The system is dell latitude e6320
Pls help me if u can
Junior
I have a similar problema. I bought a Dell Insoiron Core i7 8th Gen which is supposed to be fast but its been working slow all the time.
vijaykumar
After 5 years from the day we purchased then above recommended tips are good to implement. If the system response is slow on or before 6 months from the date of purchased then? (here one note: As you know Seller will tell us its good)