Two Windows-related faults have appeared, 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?

 

First a question. What is the size of your hard drive and how much free space do you have left?

 

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?

447 GB. The C: partition is 100 GB, with 27.5 GB free.

I have done, and the program shows no disc problems or warnings, thanks.

 

You might need to clean up temporary internet files.

In Accesories, System Tools, run the Disk Cleanup Tool on your C: drive. When it says how much space it can clear, make sure Temporary Files, Temporary Internet Files and Recycle bin are all check marked. Let it run.
After it's finished, reboot. If you have an SSD, run the Trim function that comes with it.

If you have more than one anti-virus program installed, uninstall all except Avast.

 

Have you resolved this?

 

I *think* so. Just by removing Avast! Antivirus, the laptop seems to be working normally now, with no more ~10 second pauses between my double clicking a program/game icon and the program/game starting to load.

That said, sometimes when I double click on an icon, sometimes there is still a pause (of about three or four second this time) before loading starts, which may or may not be related to the original problem, I don't know. But it's rare, and not long enough to be irritating, so I'm happy enough, thanks.

 

The issues you're describing are generally caused by poor hard drive response. It could even be the cause of Avast's poor performance. When you use an application that requires a considerable amount of RAM such as Avast, Windows will default to virtual memory (swap file) to compensate, but when that fails to adequately respond you get a slowdown. I'm not saying this is the issue confronting you but sure does sound like it.

 

This may be of some use- https://www.techworm.net/2021/06/fix-avast-service-high-cpu-usage.html

 

I've been testing free antivirus software now for almost 6 months. I've tested Avast, AVG, and Bitefender for speed and minimal demand on system resources and so far Bitdefender is the clear winner. Avast does use considerable system resources, AVG is annoying as hell nagware with all its buy me messages, while Bitfender is fast and reliable and you hardly notice it's there.

 

I've read that claim online but I haven't yet taken the time to verify it. That being said, I think Bitdefender is overall better than either of them because it's just as good at catching viruses but less annoying and demanding on system resources.