A laptop that's slower than it used to be — or running hot enough to feel uncomfortable — is rarely a hardware fault. It's usually an obvious software cause that you can fix in 10 minutes.

1. Check what's actually consuming resources

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and look at the Processes tab. Sort by CPU, then by Memory.

  • A single browser tab eating 80% CPU is suspect — close it.
  • A background Teams or OneDrive sync chewing 40% CPU often clears itself in 5 minutes.
  • An antivirus full scan can hog everything; let it finish.

If the CPU column shows nothing using much but Windows is still slow, the disk is your bottleneck. Check the Disk column — if it sits at 100% with nothing obvious, see "spinning disk" below.

2. Restart properly

On Windows, Restart clears more state than Shut down because of fast startup. Counterintuitively: Start → Power → Restart (not Shut down).

Do this once a week. Laptops that go months without a restart accumulate memory leaks.

3. Heat — clean the vents

If it's hot to the touch and the fan is screaming:

  • Make sure the vents (usually on the back or sides) aren't blocked by a cushion, blanket, or paperwork
  • Lift the back slightly off the desk to improve airflow — a couple of book stubs work fine
  • Compressed air through the vents removes dust if your laptop is more than a year old (with the laptop OFF and unplugged)

4. Check disk space

Right-click your C: drive in File Explorer → Properties. If you're under 10 GB free, Windows starts paging to disk constantly, which feels exactly like a slow laptop.

  • Empty the Recycle Bin
  • Run Disk Cleanup (search for it in Start)
  • Move large files (downloads, recordings) to OneDrive or an external drive

5. Spinning disk?

If your laptop has a traditional hard drive (HDD) rather than an SSD, it'll always be slow. Check by opening Task Manager → Performance → Disk — it'll be labeled. If it says HDD, the fix is a SSD upgrade; raise a ticket and the tech will quote the work.

6. When to ticket

Open a ticket if:

  • You've cleared resources, restarted, and still feel slowness an hour later
  • The fan is loud constantly even when the CPU is idle
  • The laptop powers itself off when it gets hot — that's thermal throttling and needs a service