Sluggish laptop

[Harry Bloomfield]

This laptop is still not running as it should! Win 11, it has a 1Gb HDD, 16Gb SDD, and used to run much faster/more responsive.

Cold boot is especially slow, so is coming back from hibernate.

It slow loading any software for first use, but much faster if closed and reloaded a second time.

Disk 2 is the intgrated SDD drive, shown as 'unallocated' - Might that mean it is failing to use the drive properly?

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Is it bogged down with all the porn?

 

[RandomGrinch]

I may be wrong, but I believe that is what a Hybrid SSHD may look like to Windows.

If it is a hybrid drive, the SSD portion is purely acting as a large and fast cache.
The SSD has a limited number of write cycles - if it was getting near to EOL, the drive would revert to standard HDD speeds.

Perhaps, given your other Windows issues, a clean install on a new SSD may give you a better experience?

 

[Diver Fred]

Normally I would expect the SSD to be the boot and operating system drive; the HDD to be drive data and infrequently used programmes resides on. Maybe you should consider a reorder of drives and a reload.
How much physical memory is in the machine? You need at least 16gb better to have 32gb with w11.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Perhaps, given your other Windows issues, a clean install on a new SSD may give you a better experience?

As I found with my much older laptop.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

How much physical memory is in the machine?

8Gb, with no slots to allow more to be fitted.

 

[RandomGrinch]

I may be wrong, but I believe that is what a Hybrid SSHD may look like to Windows.

Ok, I'm not quite right - I had a closer look at the screenshot, the 2nd drive is a 16GB Optane drive.
In effect the Optane drive works in conjunction with the separate HDD to create a sped up hybrid drive.
Description here...

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/what-is-intel-optane-memory

My previous conclusion stands!
The partition information (probably!) looks as it should...

...and get a new SSD

 

[RandomGrinch]

Some troubleshooting steps to follow, if your Optane drive has become disassociated from the HDD...

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Some troubleshooting steps to follow, if your Optane drive has become disassociated from the HDD...

Nail, head! You were absolutely correct, the Optane drive was not enabled. It is now back to flying the way it did when I first bought the laptop - thank you very much.

Unfortunately, earlier in the evening, I ordered a large SSD drive, to swap out for the HDD. Never mind, it'll come in.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

This is what my partition information should have looked like - Note how the HDD and Optane SSD appear as one drive.

 

[DiyNutJob]

Download Autoruns from microsoft. It will list everything that starts with windows. You can then uninstall anything you don't want or recognize.

Windows is always doing stuff in the background. If you completely block microsoft with a firewall, a lot of these activities will stop. Google also does lots of stuff in the background. You don't have to use their stuff.