Why your laptop feels slow (and what to check first)

"It's gone really slow" is probably the most common thing people say when they call me. It's also the vaguest. A slow machine can mean a dying disk, a browser holding 60 tabs open, or an antivirus product quietly scanning everything twice.

Here's the order I actually work through, cheapest fix first.

1. How much free disk space is there?

A drive that's nearly full has nowhere to put temporary files, and everything grinds. If you're under about 10% free, that's your answer. Empty the Downloads folder, clear the recycle bin, and look for old video files — they're usually the culprit.

2. What starts up with the machine?

Every app that adds itself to startup takes a slice of the first two minutes after you log in. Most don't need to be there. On Windows, Task Manager's Startup tab sorts them by impact, which makes the decision easy.

3. How old is the drive?

If the machine is more than about five years old and still has a spinning hard drive, no amount of tidying will fix it. Swapping to an SSD is the single biggest improvement you can make to an older laptop, and it usually costs less than people expect.

4. Is something scanning constantly?

If a third-party antivirus was installed on top of the one already built into the operating system, they can end up fighting each other. One is enough.

5. Now consider RAM

Notice that memory is last on this list. It's the thing people ask me about first, and it's rarely the actual bottleneck — unless you're editing video or running virtual machines.

The honest answer

Sometimes the machine is simply past it, and I'll tell you that rather than sell you an upgrade that buys six months. But most of the time it's one of the first two items above, and it costs nothing to fix.