Computer suddenly very slow
I'm currently using a Dell computer, running on an Intel i5 CPU, which is about two years old. It's always had pretty good performance for the few video games I play – Minecraft and Sims, mostly – and in general.
However, recently, it's begun to lag horrendously. Minecraft has started performing terribly (even with 0 mods and the lowest playable graphics settings), Sims has ridiculously long load times and gradually becomes slower until eventually, I have to restart it or risk crashing the game (or sometimes my full PC) after only about an hour. Even Chrome will start to slow down or crash if I open more than five or six tabs. I've been experiencing lag in online games, despite having a pretty decent and completely stable Ethernet connection – I don't know enough to tell for sure, but I'm thinking that may be a result of the performance slowdown, too.
I've tried a ton of things. I check for viruses regularly and have done in-depth scans with multiple products since the problems started, and haven't found anything. I tried clearing out hard drive space, doing a deep clean of all my files, folders, and apps, fixing any file errors or shortcuts, everything a cleanup software is capable of. It did very little to help performance. I'm not an expert, but as far as I know, 30% of hard drive disk space open shouldn't be too little to function properly.
If anyone knows what may be causing the problem, I'd love to hear any solutions. Having to restart my PC five times over five hours and being unable to use it efficiently has been infuriating. My specs and any potentially helpful details are below:
- Windows 10 OS
- Computer:
- Intel i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10 GHz
- AMD Radeon R7 240 graphics chipset
- 8 GB of DDR3 memory
- I currently use AVG Antivirus software
- The only full programs I have set to start up on boot are Spotify and Discord
What should I do to diagnose the problem and understand what is happening? What should I be looking for?
9 Reset to default
