How do I speed up a slow laptop?

Slowness has a small number of causes and they're easy to work through in order. Most 'my laptop is too old' situations turn out to be a full disk, twenty startup programs, or a spinning hard drive — and the last one has a cheap fix that makes an eight-year-old machine feel new.

What you'll need

• External drive for backup before hardware changes (optional)

Step by step

1. Restart the laptop properly, not just close the lid.Machines that are only ever suspended accumulate memory pressure over weeks. A genuine restart is a real fix, not a joke.
2. Check what launches at startup and disable anything you don't need.Windows: Task Manager → Startup apps. macOS: System Settings → General → Login Items. This is usually the largest single improvement.
3. Check free disk space and get it above 15% of the drive.Both Windows and macOS slow markedly when nearly full — they need working space for paging and temporary files.
4. Uninstall software you don't use, especially anything that runs in the background.Old antivirus, updaters, sync clients and manufacturer utilities are the usual offenders.
5. Close browser tabs, and check for browser extensions you don't recognise.A browser with fifty tabs can use more memory than everything else combined. Extensions can be worse.
6. Run a malware scan.Windows Defender is adequate. Sudden slowdown with no other change is a classic symptom.
7. Install pending operating system updates.Updates often include performance fixes, and a machine perpetually mid-update is a machine perpetually busy.
8. If it's still slow, check whether the drive is mechanical or solid state — and if mechanical, replace it with an SSD.This is the single biggest performance upgrade available for an older machine, and usually inexpensive. Back up first.
9. Consider adding RAM if the machine regularly runs out of memory.Check actual memory usage under load first. 8GB is a reasonable minimum now; more only helps if you're actually hitting the limit.

Tips

• Check the fans and vents. A laptop full of dust overheats and deliberately slows itself down to protect the hardware — cleaning the vents can restore full speed.
• Before spending on hardware, note what's actually slow. Slow startup, slow browsing and slow file operations have different causes.
• Many manufacturer 'system optimiser' tools do very little and add background load themselves. Uninstall them.
• If the machine can't be upgraded and can't run current software, a lightweight Linux distribution can give an old laptop several more useful years.

Common mistakes

• Installing a 'PC cleaner' or registry optimiser — Most do nothing measurable, some are adware, and a few break things. The built-in tools are sufficient.
• Filling the drive to capacity — Both Windows and macOS need free space to work and slow dramatically when short of it.
• Never restarting — Weeks of suspend-resume accumulates memory pressure and background processes.
• Buying a new laptop before trying an SSD — On a machine with a mechanical drive, an SSD often delivers most of the benefit of a new laptop for a small fraction of the price.

Questions people ask