Very slow win 10 system

I am just lucky to get here to this page at all! It took 20 minutes trying to navigate here. Once inside it was like pulling teeth to get to this page. I kept getting the error page not responding and it is the same whatever I try to do. For instances I try pulling up settings, after about 5 clicks I finally got it to respond. Once in settings I clicked on what I wanted to do and nothing happens, I keep clicking and clicking and finally the page comes up. I can't work this way.

No, according to "my pc" it is not full (see attachment). The hard drive before was not at all full,, about the same as now. But at the very beginning when I was trying to solve the microphone problem that version of win 10 I was running was very fast.
Before when this whole thing started I had microphone problems so MS customer service told me to download the Tool again and run it. After that is when my machine slowed down and its been down hill ever since.

 

I'm still confused as to the process that was used to "re-install" W10. I'm not convinced that a proper install of W10 was even achieved.

A proper install would be booting from the W10 USB stick, deleting the partitions, creating one new partition, perform the install, and immediately do the Windows updates including the drivers under the "Optional Updates" section.

 

If the new install was done correctly, then I would have thought he would have said something like, "What do I do about these partitions"?

Also, I don't ever recall an instance in which W10 would install unless all the C drive partitions were deleted. The times that I accidently tried to install on the main partition without deleting all the partitions, Setup would say something akin to, "Windows can not be installed on the existing partition".

I'd probably get him to restore the BIOS defaults as well, because who knows what's going on there. Maybe AHCI was inadvertently disabled, or something like that.

 

During the setup, and on the "How do you want to install Windows"? screen. There is an Upgrade option which keeps all the user installed apps and files, settings, etc. That option won't show the partitions, and that option isn't good enough to rule the software/hardware in or out. The other option is "Custom" which then shows the drive partition screen. I think he chose the former, and that's why he didn't mention the partitions.

 

That is exactly what I did.

Okay, fair enough. What do you suggest I do to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is my hard drive and not a software or installation problem?

It is all under ONE partition. All I did in bios was change the boot order to usb being number one so I can use the usb as a boot option in the future. Re storing the bios back to defaults would leave me high and dry should something happen and I need to boot up from the usb.

 

Yes, that is right

Yes, that is right. I tried to use the first option but was told by win that it was not available to me so I had no choice but to chose number two which was okay by me since I had saved all my files to my eternal hard drive and could easily but them back.

 

Ok good.

So it does indeed look like you have a hardware problem. Now I'm thinking that you have a mechanical drive and not a SSD, because it is unlikely an ssd will fail, but mechanical drives fail a lot. Go into device manager and google the name and/or model number of the drive. What type of drive is it?

 

To add to that, mechanical hard drives typically fail much sooner in a laptop than in a desktop computer. Mechanical drives are very fragile, and laptops get moved around, bumped, dropped, etc. This slowly or quickly knocks the read/write head out of alignment, or damages the circuit board.

Also, mechanical drives require strict tolerances and precise components. So much so, that it's a small wonder that they even work at all

 

I have attached a copy of the device manager. I don't really know how to read this and the only things I see with drives in it are there but I don't think they are hard drives. See Attachments. The one attachment "Drive" is all I could get out of Google. If true then it is an SSD, I don't know for sure.

I have always used the laptop as a desk top pc never as a portable. It has never been bumped around.

It isn't so much the cost of a hard drive it is the logistics of getting one to begin with. As I live on a remote island in the Philippines and we are in Covid19 lock down times, this is hard to do. I would have to travel a half days journey by boat and bus to get to a computer shop, if I could travel at all. BY the way, about how much in dollars would a drive cost? I can convert to pesos.
Anyway, all this is why I hope it is a software or configuration problem not a hard drive. Wishful thinking I guess.

 

The model # of the drive shows that it is indeed a mechanical drive. Unfortunately, it's failing.

 

Ok, fair enough. Now the question is can the mechanical hard drive be replaced? I know in some models they cannot.
Also, would it be better financially to just get another pc or a desktop? I have noticed certain letters on my keyboard not working unless force is used. It is hard for me to believe that a five year old laptop that I paid 40,000 pesos ($800)for would fail so soon. Maybe another brand is advisable?

 

I found I can order over the internet it will just take a few weeks to get here. I will order a 2.5 inch ssd 500 Gig hard drive. I found a friend here to install it for me.
I want to do this right so when I get the new hard drive installed I boot up with my USB using the win 10 installation not run the installation from the USB, right?
Thanks for all the help.

 

Well actually I couldn't run install from the USB if I wanted to since I would need an operating system so I must boot up from the USB. Dumb question. Besides, I would like to start clean anyway.

 

Yes the Acer drivers and in fact the Acer center that used to be on my pc are all missing. I found the site to download them from There is a whole page of them. They will go to Downloads but then what? Most will be in zip format. Do I unzip them there in Downloads or send them somewhere special and unzip them there? Some of these files have a .exe file but some don't. I can run the .exe files but how about the others that don't have .exe? This is my first time downloading drivers. Thanks.