Solved: Why My Laptop is Very Slow after Formatting?

Why my laptop is very slow after formatting?

“Hi, I had recently gotten a laptop for free from one of my friends, When I got it, it was already factory reset and it worked reasonably fast, I could play games like League of Legends or Civ5 and it would run at 40fps perfectly normally. But after a few days, it immediately began running slow to the point where games were near unplayable. I tried factory resetting it and it was still slow. Please help.”

Possible causes of a laptop running very slow after formatting

Various reasons may lead this issue to appear on your laptop. It’s upsetting to search “My laptop is very slow after formatting” in the search engine after waiting for formatting. In this part, we list some possible reasons to help you get rid of the confusion about what might bring the bad performance of your formatted laptop.

1. Aged
If your laptop has taken service for many years, then the physical consumption of the hardware is an inevitable problem. And the physical damage can’t be repaired, which will make your laptop slow after reformat Windows 10.

2. Fragmentation of the hard drive
The fragments could devour lots of available space on the hard drive with the increase of the service time. They will spread around the whole hard drive, which leaves great difficulty in cleaning manually.

3. Insufficient storage space
2 situations may lead your formatted laptop to run slowly.

• A small hard drive.
If you’re using a small hard drive, the system files may take up much space on the C drive.

• Installation error
Failure to reset and install the system correctly, resulting in not deleting the previous system’s history files. Fortunately, these files can be deleted manually.

Low free space hard drive, especially the C drive is occupied by the system files, the laptop will become extremely slow.

4. Corrupted hard drive.
The bad sectors on the hard drive can corrupt your saved data as well as slow down your computer.

5. Too many desktop icons.
Too many desktop icons can slow down the startup speed. Every time Windows starts and displays the desktop, it has to find the icons of the shortcuts and load them one by one. The more icons, the more time it takes

…

A tutorial of improving your slow laptop after formatting

Based on the reasons we listed above, we proffer you some solutions, you can try some methods according to your specific situation.

▌Use Windows tools

Method 1. Check all hardware

The first factor we should ensure is if there’s any physical issue with all hardware. So, you may check the connection of all continents, the shape, the fans…Here, we will show details about how to use “CHKDSK” to check the bad sectors.

Step 1. Press “Windows” + “R” simultaneously, type cmd, press “Enter”.

Step 2. In the command prompt and you can start to check the disk with the command line. If you do not know how to use it, you can type chkdsk /? and hit Enter, which will give you its parameters.

if you want to check the G: drive, you can type the command in the prompt: "chkdsk g:", To find and repair any errors that are found in G: drive, type "chkdsk g: /f" instead.

Note:  Check Disk can’t repair volumes that are in use. If the volume is in use, it will display a prompt that asks if you want to schedule the volume to be checked the next time you restart the system. Click “Yes”.

Method 2. Install more RAM

The most important thing you should pay attention to is what kind of RAM can be installed on your laptop. Or, you can choose to change your small disk to a larger SSD.

32-bit system
If your system is a 32-bit operating system, the installed RAM in your computer is 4GB, then you could only choose 4GB RAM.

64-bit system
If your system is 64-bit, then you can choose 4GB and 8GB. If your 64-bits system memory is a low frequency 4GB DDR3RAM, you can replace it with 8GB DDR4 RAM.

Method 3. Clean cache files

Part 1. Clean useless file cache in the system

These cache files are stored by the programs, and they will always be replaced by new files. You can clean them manually.

Step 1. Click “Start” and search “cleanmgr”.

Step 2. Choose the drives, and clean them one after one.

Step 3. Wait for the calculation.

Step 4. Click “Clean Up System Files” at the bottom of the window.

Step 5. Click “OK”. Wait for a while, and select the cache files you wish to delete, then click “OK”.

Part 2. Clean temporary cache.

Follow the path to find the temporary file folder: “This PC” > “Local Disk (C:)” > “Windows” > “Temp”.

▌A versatile disk manager

Once we make sure that the hard drive doesn’t have any fatal physical damage, then we should start to manage our hard drive to repair the slow laptop. There are many ways you can attempt, an all-in-one tool can save a lot of things. AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is such a versatile disk problem helper to make all things easier for you. This powerful software not only can adjust available drive space to maximize space efficiency but to protect your disk in all directions. Thus, let’s see what this convenient tool can do to improve your slow computer.

Method 1. Extend C drive

The system drive needs enough space to run smoothly, so releasing more space for the C drive is necessary. AOMEI Partition Assistant can extend C drive from the free space of another drive. All limits like discrete unallocated space in Windows Disk Management can be avoided.

If your hard drive has an unallocated space, you can choose the “Merge Partition” function.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, and right-click the C drive, choose “Advanced” and select “Merge Partition”.

Step 2. Choose the unallocated space and click “OK”.

Step 3. Click “Apply” to commit the operation.

Then, you can open “This computer” to check.

If there’s no unallocated space:

Step 1. Right-click the partition from which you want to allocate free space and select "Allocate Free Space".

Step 2. In a pop-up window, type in the size of the free space which you want to cut from the D partition, and this free space will be directly added into the destination partition.

Step 3. Click "Apply" to execute this operation. In the pop-out window, you can see how much time it will cost you to finish this operation. You can also tick "Check partitions before execution" to go through the partition in case of any error in it. By default, this option is ticked.

Wait for seconds, close the program to exit.

Besides adjusting partition space, moving installed big programs to other drives or other disks is also a convenient way to release more free space, AOMEI Partition Assistant can transfer your programs without reinstallation.

Method 2. Defrag HDD

Fragmentation is a growing problem for all HDD. Defragmentation is the solution to speed up your laptop. Partition Assistant has a “Defrag Disk” feature to help you. You could choose a schedule defrag to regularly defrag your devices automatically.

Step 1. Right-click on the disk and select the "Disk Defrag" function.

Step 2. Check the partition needed to be analyzed, and click "Analyze". You need to check the partition, not select it. Because this function currently only supports NTFS partitions, so it will only list NTFS partitions on SSD, HDD, and USB drives.

Tip: You can click "Pause" to halt the process and resume later, or click "Stop" to end the analysis process completely.

Step 3: The program will score the partition based on the fragmentation rate when the analysis is over.

There are 3 statuses according to the score:
Normal: Score ≥ 90. The partition is in good condition, with no need for defragmentation.
Suggest defragmenting: 60≤ Score ＜ 90. The current partition has some fragments, which suggest running defragmentation.
Defragment now: Score ＜ 60. There are many fragments in the current partition, suggest running the defragmentation immediately.

You can check the distribution of fragments through the Tetris view.

Step 4. After the analysis is finished, you can click on "Details" to see more information about the analysis results:
•Total files and directories
•Fragmented files
•Fragments
•Fragmentation Rate

Step 5. Click the "Defrag" button to start the defragmentation.

Tip: You could click "Pause" to halt the procedure and resume later, or click "Stop" to terminate the process completely.

After the defragmentation is completed, the partition will be scored according to the defragmentation result.

Note: If the fragment files are in use, they cannot be defragmented.

Tip: If it’s a little difficult for you to use CMD to check your HDD, Partition Assistant can also help you check your drive and repair the bad sectors.

Method 3. Migrate OS

If it’s possible, you can buy an SSD to pursue a fast experience and improve your PC performance. You can move your OS from HDD to SSD to get fast speed and smooth performance. “Migrate OS to SSD” function of Partition Assistant can transfer OS only without any trouble about reinstalling.

Step 1. Please insert your SSD to your PC, and run AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Step 2. In the left menu, click “Clone” in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”.

Step 3. In the new window, choose an unallocated space on your SSD, then click “Next”.

Step 4. Adjust the size and name of your new partition and click ”Next”.

Step 5. Click “Finish” and “Apply” to over the procedure.

Then, your SSD is set up. You can try to boot your PC from the destination SSD to check.

Now you know how to repair a laptop running very slow, AOMEI Partition Assistant supports Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista system, and it has Server edition. You can leave your disk glitches to this considerate tool to protect the safety of your drives