laptop very slow all the time.

al shookup

My friend has an Acer aspire laptop running windows 10 and it is extremely slow to boot up and very very slow to respond to any typed commands. It is only a few year old and has had little use. Is there a quick fix that a non tech person can use to sort it out please?

JayCee

I suspect the model number would help others to help you.

al shookup

It's an Acer Aspire 5551-A

razy60

Check taskmanager and see what startup and back ground processes are being used, to get to it, right click on the task bar select taskmanager then view the appropriate tab. If it's possible get a screen image.

GeneticMutation

Does it have a HDD or an SSD? How much Ram does it have? A few simple upgrades may sort it out.

EndlessWaves

Only a few years? It's nearly a decade old.

The Acers with AMD processors of that era were not very capable to begin with so I wouldn't expect it to be fast nine years later.

It does sound like it might have an issue though, it probably shouldn't be quite as slow as you're describing.

If it's not used much then there's probably not going to be much disruption with the drastic approach, so I'd suggest using Windows 10's Reset option which wipes it and starts from scratch.
                                                https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4026528/windows-10-reset-or-reinstall                       
Do make sure any of your friend's data that is on there is backed up first, and that the installers are available for any applications they do use.

Bl4ckGryph0n

That age, not used much. It could be a case of what I noticed at my mother-in-law. She used the computer so irregularly and for short periods of times, and then fully powers it off, thus any required updates never seem to get the opportunity to complete their download, let alone install. Combine that with a hard drive which constantly spins and you get one very slow machine. Before going looking for issues, leave it running for a day or so. Let it restart several times, ensure updates get applied. Then use it more often.

If the problem still persists then start looking for start-up items etc.

ChuckMountain

There were some terrible processors back there as others have said.  I have a HP machine with a dual AMD cpu and combined APU and it is ridiculously slow.  I even upgraded it to a reasonable SSD and 16GB of ram and it is still crap.  It has had a clean install of windows 10 but I don’t think that helps as although there are drivers for it they are also very old and were just made to get it going rather than any real thought.

I also have a business laptop from the same era with the same ram and ssd, but this has low end dual core intel i5 I think and it is so much quicker....

al shookup

Thanks to all for your help....much appreciated.