Two Windows 10 Related Problems, Please Help.

I have an old laptop, an Acer Aspire E1 Z5WE1 NXMEPEK Laptop E1-570 Intel i5 CPU (8 GB RAM, Windows 10), that until recently was running fine. But sometime in the past few weeks, it's developed two faults, which may be connected to each other, I don't know. These two faults are:


Fault 1 - When I double click on a program, or a game, or a text file on the desktop, etc, then there is a pause of about eight or ten seconds, with the Windows 10 swirling circle swirling around, before the game (or program, or text file, etc) begins to load. After this pause, though the program or game loads as normal and plays at full speed and with no problems. And when I exit the program, or game, etc, then when I double click on a different program, game, etc, then the ten seconds or so of swirling circle reappears, before the laptop starts to load the game/program/etc.

Prior to this fault appearing, a few weeks ago, whenever I double clicked on a game or program, etc, then it would start to load immediately, as it normally should.


Fault 2 - When I use the web browser Brave on the laptop, then after opening say a dozen pages (whether I leave all the pages open, or I close one before opening another) then the web pages stop opening, it's as though the web signal stops getting through. This also happens if I use Firefox instead (I've not tried a third browser on the laptop yet). Every other item in my house that can connect to the web (my desktop PC, my tablet, my game consoles, etc) works fine, it's just the laptop that displays this problem. Again, up until a few weeks back, this problem didn't exist, and I could open new pages without problem. My laptop is wirelessly connected to the router, as are the other things.




The laptop seems to be working fine other than these two problems, Windows 10 is up to date, and the laptop is always plugged in, so it's presumably not a battery related issue. Both Malwarebytes and Avast! antivirus show the laptop as being uninfected, the laptop has two SSD drives (one of which has replaced the DVD drive, via an internal hard drive caddy, months ago, so not related to these problems), and no mechanical drive. I have run

chkdsk C: /F /X

and

SFC /Scannow

and

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

with no errors detected. I don't want to reformat and reinstall everything, because there are many games and programs installed, and other than these two faults, everything seems fine.

Any ideas or suggestions, please?

 

with #1, the ten plus second delay, i feel your pain, and i have no idea what to do about it. a good 10 years ago or so, my brother built himself a top of the line win7 gaming computer. when he upgraded to a brand new win10 computer a few years back, he was just going to junk that old gaming computer, but i thought i could put win10 on it and use it to see what the fuss is about ( i'm basically an apple person ). anyway, win10 installed just fine, got all the updates just fine, got some programs on it just fine, and was pleased with its performance. i turned it off, came back to it a few days later, and it was like what the frick and frack just happened, opening anything, my computer, a folder, control panel, starting a program, everything took 10 to 15 seconds to open or start. it was an old school mechanical hard drive, so i cloned the drive to a new SSD, but that did not solve the long delay when opening anything. so i just gave up on it since it was just going to be a computer to experiment with. i no longer have that gaming computer, in hindsight, i probably should have looked into upgrading the BIOS to a newer version, oh well.

#2 is probably related to #1, only thought here is to turn off the wireless and try a wired connection to your router. I have never had much success with wireless, and have always preferred a wired connection.

good luck with it.

 

When you upgraded to windows 10, did you also update the disk and wifi drivers as well?

It's possible that the windows indexing and caching services are taking time to record the updated system accesses, applications, etc.

Have you tried using system diagnostic or optimising tools such as:
Download Advanced SystemCare - MajorGeeks
Download SpeedGuide.net TCP Optimizer - MajorGeeks

Also, have a read of the following and related articles: How to Improve Your Wireless Network Performance - MajorGeeks

 

For #2 I would suspect a browser add-on. Try turning them off. If that fixes the problem then re-enable them one at a a time until the fault reappears.

No idea about #1

 

Thanks for all of the responses.

I *might* have solved both of the problems with the laptop. I had begun uninstalling things that might be slowing the system down, and when I uninstalled Avast! Anti-virus, and rebooted, then everything started to load almost immediately when I double clicked on their icon. Success! So I rebooted, and re-installed Avast!, and the slowdown was back. I uninstalled Avast!, rebooted, and for the last couple of days everything is working fine, including the former second problem of the browser refusing to load more than a few pages.

I can sort of understand how Avast! could perhaps go wrong and start scanning things and so slow down loading (if I doble clicked on three .TXT files in a row, for example, then each one would take say eight or ten seconds to open, even if each .TXT file was only two or three kilobytes in size).

But I can't understand how Avast! could cause a web browser to stop loading after a few pages, though.

Anyway, everything seems fine now, and I am currently using Windows Defender as I don't want to rock the boat until I am sure that the two problems have been fixed - many times I have supposedly fixed a PC related problem, only for it to re-appear again later, so I am suspicious especially of easy fixes such as this one.

What good, free anti-viruses do you recommend, please?

No, I always turn off windows indexing, though I don't know about Windows' cashing systems.

I will look at them, thanks.

Your problem with the older Windows 10 PC might have been caused by a Windows update that altered some settings, or that replaced some important files. I've never used a Mac, do they too suffer from problems resulting from mandatory (though often unwanted) official patches?

Sorry, I should have said that I had tried option one before posting the problem.

 

oh yes, apple has had their share of problems from updates over the years, though i have not experienced them.
i'm glad you were able to isolate your problem. it sounded just like the problem i had, but i think my brother's computer was just too old to deal with win10. take care.

 

For the Anti-virus, see the top picks here: MajorGeeks Top Freeware Picks - MajorGeeks

 

That's a great list for so many subjects, thanks. I think I will stick with MS Defender, unless I find a problem with it.