HP Laptop Running Slow Windows 10: Reasons + Solutions

Scenario: HP laptop running slow Windows 10

“My HP Laptop running very slow most times when using a browser, Edge and Google, Teams, Zoom, Twitter, FB, etc. And it even takes up to 10 minutes to start up. Apart from throwing away this brand new Laptop, is there a way to fix the HP laptop running slow Windows 10?”

As one of the most common issues of computers, a slow PC brings much inconvenience and sometimes severe impacts if not solved in time. The next content will answer these two questions: why is my HP Windows 10 laptop so slow? How do I speed up my HP laptop Windows 10?

Common reasons and quick fixes to HP laptop running slow Windows 10

There are a number of reasons behind the situation of HP laptop running slow and freezing Windows 10. We've collected the most possible causes for it and show you how to fix it quickly.

1. You're out of memory.

If you have any heavy-duty programs on the background, especially too many programs running at the same time, you easily get into a state of constant lagging.

The quick fix: Press "Ctrl + Alt + Delete" keys to open "Task Manager", right-click the unnecessary programs, and select "End task".

2. Your files are fragmented.

File fragmentation may cause HP laptop running very slow because it takes Windows more time to access these scattered files on the hard drive.

The quick fix: Type "defrag" in the search bar, choose "Defragment and Optimize Drives" from the result, select the target drive in the new window, and click "Optimize" to defrag the disk.

3. Your hard drive is too full.

When you use the computer, you certainly produce a number of junk files day by day. These files don't seem to take up much space, but they are one of the main factors that cause HP laptop running slow Windows 10.

The quick fix: Type "disk cleanup" in the search box and hit "Enter". Select a drive and click "OK". Then, tick the files you want to delete and click "OK" to begin cleaning junk files on the selected hard drive.

4. You're infected by viruses and malware.

Usually, viruses and malware slow down your PC by corrupting general processes. If you don’t erase them at once, they may damage your hard drive completely, and even worse, destroy your operating system.

The quick fix: Press "Windows+ I" to open the Settings, click "Update & Security" > "Windows Security" > "Open Windows Security" > "Virus & threat protection" > "Scan options", select a scanning method based on your need, and click 'Scan now" to scan and remove viruses and malware.

5. Your HP laptop has excessive dust accumulation.

The high temperature will affect the performance of CPU, so there is a fan on the CPU used to dissipate heat. However, a lot of dust may be accumulated on the fan due to static electricity. If it is not cleaned in time, the dust accumulated in the air outlet will lead to a slow HP laptop. Therefore, you can speed up Windows 10 by cleaning up the dust.

Advanced tips to speed up slow HP laptop Windows 10/11

If your PC doesn't get a significant speed boost after trying the above ways, follow this part that provides you with more advanced methods to fix your HP laptop running slow Windows 11/10.

▶ Solution to excessive RAM usage: Disable startup programs

Apart from background programs, startup applications are another component that is biting up the usage of RAM. If stopping the apps on the backgrounds doesn't make any difference, disabling startup programs may help you run the freezing laptop faster.

Step 1. Press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" simultaneously to open "Task Manager".

Step 2. In the pop-up window, click Startup tab, and all the startup apps will be listed.

Step 3. Right-click the program you want to disable and choose "Disable". Then, it won't start up automatically when you boot your PC.

▶ Solution to fragmented files: Schedule defrag disk

Performing disk defrag once may not have much effect. It's suggested that you should set a regular time to defragment your hard drive. To schedule degrag a disk, all you need is a reliable disk defragment tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional (support Windows 11/10/8/7Vista/XP).

With a clear interface, it allows you to defrag your hard drives more efficiently and conveniently. You can use it to run disk defrag daily, weekly, monthly, at which clock, on what conditions, etc.

Please download the demo version to see how to fix HP laptop running slow Windows 10 by using AOMEI Partition Assistant to schedule defrag disk.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Righ click the target disk and select "Disk Defrag".

Step 2. In the "Disk Defrag" window, hit "Schedule".

Step 3. Now, choose the drive you want to optimize and decide whether to run defrag daily, weekly, or monthly. Then, you can tick "Conditions" and click "Define" to preset on what conditions to defrag.

Besides presetting how often to defrag, you can also determine whether to defrag at startup or at logon.

▶ Solution to insufficient disk space:

Asides from the junk files piled on the disk, it’s no doubt that you download numerous programs, applications, and store photos, videos, and other files on your computer for daily use, and everything is stored on your hard drive (C drive is the default location). If 90% capacity of your hard drive is occupied, your PC will perform 50% slower than its original state. That's where HP laptop running very slow comes in.

To solve it, we collect the following three methods to help you.

1. Remove unnecessary programs

Firstly, uninstalling unused programs is an effective way to free up disk space.

Step 1. Press "Windows + I" keys to open Windows Settings, and click "Apps" to continue.

Step 2. In the "Apps & features" section, all the applications you installed on your laptop will be listed. Select the software you hardly use and hit the "Uninstall" button. Repeat this operation to remove all the unwanted software.

2. Extend system partition

If you want to keep all the software on your computer, you can try the second way: increase the size of system partition. You can extend the partition in Disk Management, but using AOMEI Partition Assistant is much easier. Follow the steps to see how to add space to one drive from another drive directly.

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and find the drive with enough free space like D drive. Right-click it and choose the button "Allocate Free Space".

Step 2. The following picture will let you choose the size you want to allocate and the destination drive you want to add such as allocating 243.81GB from D to C drive.

Step 3. Finally, click "Apply" > "Proceed" to commit the operation.

3. Upgrade hard drive

If HP laptop running slow Windows 10/11 is caused by an aging or failing hard drive, the best way of improving the computer performance is to upgrade the hard drive to a new one. Compared with HDD, SSD is more recommended to be the destination disk.

If you don't want to reinstall Windows or other software, you can copy data from old HDD to SSD. After cloning, everything does not seem to change. Thus, you can keep your configuration settings and enjoy a higher speed at the same time.

Scroll down to see how to complete the upgrade with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, the best disk cloning software on the market.

Step 1. Open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional on your laptop. Click "Clone" and "Clone Disk" on the interface.

Step 2. Select a disk clone method as you like. Here, we choose "Clone Disk Quickly" as an example.

Step 3. Select the laptop hard drive you want to replace and click "Next".

Step 4. Then select the new SSD as the destination disk and click "Next". Tick "Optimize the performance of SSD" to make SSD 4K alignment.

Step 5. In the new windows, you can resize the partitions on the new drive. Select the one that fits your need and click "Next".

Step 6. After reading a note, click "Finish" and then click "Apply" to execute the operation. 

After that, everything on your old drive has been transferred to the new one. You can boot from the cloned SSD now, then, you will find the HP laptop running slow and freezing Windows 10 has gone.

Conclusion

Why is my HP Windows 10 laptop so slow and how to fix HP laptop running slow Windows 10? This passage has explained these two questions in detail. If you have encounter such issue, you can easily find the corresponding solution for different situations.

As you can see, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional has played an important role in speeding up a slow HP laptop. In addition to the methods we have discussed above, you can also try  moving folders from C drive to D drive, deleting large files, migrating only OS to SSD, and more.