5 hot tips to speed up your notebook

Occasionally we get the following question: "My old laptop has become very slow, what can I do about it?"

Remove the dust

Dust builds up even in the cleanest household. In notebooks and PCs, it can affect system performance, especially if it accumulates in one of the fans. It clogs not only the ventilation slots but also the fan blades, thus reducing the amount of air flow.

Components such as the processor, RAM, and, in PCs, the graphics card, occasionally emit significant amounts of heat under heavy load. Without effective fan dissipation, this heat can lead to overheating. If one of these components overheats, the notebook or computer may shut down inadvertently.

Removing dust from the ventilation slots, for example, with a brush or compressed air, is the first step. If you also want to clean the coolers on your processor or graphics card, you should be familiar with the hardware, as mistakes during removal or installation can damage the components. Be sure to consult the user manual, which the manufacturer provides online, before you begin.

Check the RAM and hard drive

There are some tried and tested methods to help you release the handbrake on your RAM and hard drive and get your notebook or PC into the fast lane.

One of these is "cleaning up" your hard drive: With tools like the free CCleaner, you can detect useless system slowdowns, such as temporary files, and carefully remove them from your hard drive. The associated Registry Cleaner combs through the registry database for outdated or incorrect entries and cleans them up. Using the backup function, you can undo individual optimizations. After removing the "data junk," you should defragment your hard drive.

Uninstall programs or apps you no longer need

Check the Control Panel (in Windows 7 and Windows 10) or Settings (in Windows 10) to see which programs you rarely or no longer use, and uninstall them if necessary. However, be careful with programs you're unfamiliar with, as they could be pre-installed driver packages or system programs required to operate your laptop or PC.

Important: Be sure to use the operating system's installation routine to uninstall the application as completely as possible. Simply deleting program folders won't achieve this. If you've forgotten your Windows 11 password, no problem! Here's a guide on how to forget your Windows 11 password.

Only use up-to-date virus protection software

In the past, users often complained that antivirus software slowed down their systems. However, with increasing laptop and PC performance and more advanced virus protection solutions, this problem no longer exists.

However, for security reasons alone, make sure that your protection programs are up to date and always use the latest virus definitions.

Even if you want to be on the safe side, do not use more than one antivirus software, because different antivirus programs running side by side can hinder each other more than they help.

Reinstall or refresh Windows

You use your laptop or PC intensively every day for surfing and working – and after a while, you no longer measure the startup time of your laptop or PC in seconds, but in minutes. Frequent installations and uninstallations of programs, updates, and drivers have left their mark on the operating system, slowing it down. Friends recommend tuning tools, but they don't really help. Now it's time to reinstall Windows, perform a Windows repair (in Windows 7), or refresh the installation (in Windows 10).

Caution: If you have no experience installing a Windows operating system, you should first familiarize yourself with the process, for example, in relevant Internet forums or on the Microsoft website.

Please note: Reinstalling Windows will not only result in the loss of all data on the system partition, but also all settings and personal data. Therefore, back up all your data first, proceed with a plan, and gain clarity before you begin. A Windows repair (for Windows 7) or Windows refresh (for Windows 10) might be a less radical step, as this preserves your personal files.

If these measures no longer help

If your notebook is too old, unfortunately, these measures won't help either. In these cases, we recommend purchasing an affordable used and refurbished notebook that's as good as new.

These laptops are trade show and lease returns, demonstration units, and warehouse returns that we professionally refurbish and resell. We also offer very new used models that the manufacturer used for testing. Below you'll find some very interesting models.

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