
Slow Laptop? Don’t worry! Your laptop may indeed get slow after a few years of working. However, there are reliable methods that can speed up your laptop significantly. Compared to buying a brand-new laptop, you do not need to invest a lot of money to try these methods. However, you’ll get nearly the same performance as a brand-new one after implementing these methods. Before you go to purchase a brand new laptop, I suggest you try these methods in order to save a lot of your money!
Update (2022–05–22): Watch the following video to see how my 5-year-old laptop shows a significant performance increase (10x-15x) after replacing the hard disk with an SSD, adding another RAM stick and clean installing Windows. It only cost me around 1/15 of the price of a new laptop. My laptop now takes just 16 seconds to boot up and takes 74 seconds to start 10 apps (including Adobe Premiere Pro 2021) after I implemented the above-mentioned things!
Boot from an SSD
If your laptop boots from a hard disk, your laptop will be really slow. A hard disk has moving parts and it takes a lot of time to read and write data. You have definitely experienced some kind of lag and Performance issues when working with hard disks. In contrast, an SSD (Solid State Drive) has no moving parts and offers you a significant performance increase (10x-15x) depending on the type of SSD you use. There are two methods of installing an SSD on your laptop:
- Replacing the hard disk with an SSD – This method should be applied when there is no separate SSD slot on your laptop motherboard.
- Just installing the SSD – This method can be used when there is a separate SSD slot on your laptop motherboard.
Replacing the hard disk with an SSD
To get better performance, first make sure that your laptop motherboard has a SATA 6 Gbps port through which your current hard disk is connected to the laptop. Below the speed of 6 Gb/s port, you cannot expect much performance from an SSD. To check this information, you can use hwinfo freeware which is free to use for non-commercial use. Visit the webpage and download it from the Local (U.S.) server. Then run the installer and install the program. Run the installed program with default settings. It will begin analyzing your system hardware. After completing, click on the summary tab.

My 5-year-old laptop has a SATA 6 Gbps port. I can get a much better performance if I replace the hard disk with an SSD and boot from it.
The most important thing is that you should buy an SSD of 2.5-inch form factor to replace the hard disk. An SSD of m.2 form factor cannot be replaced with your hard disk!

After installing the SSD, you need to reinstall the operating system, system drivers and other programs to the new SSD. Therefore, I highly recommend you back up your data, software product keys and other useful account information to avoid any possible losses.
Just installing the SSD
If your laptop motherboard has a separate SSD slot, you can easily install an SSD. This time, you need an SSD of m.2 form factor. The m.2 slots on your laptop motherboard can be:
- M.2 SATA (NGFF)
- M.2 PCIe (NVMe) Gen 3/4
There is no difference in performance between a 2.5-inch SATA SSD and an M.2 SATA SSD. Only the appearance is different.
If your motherboard supports NVMe, go for an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD which is incredibly faster (4x – 6x times) than a traditional 2.5 inch or M.2 SATA SSD.

In this method, you need to migrate/clean install the OS and other programs to the SSD and set it as the boot drive in UEFI (BIOS) settings. You can also keep the initial hard disk to store your files. It will work as a normal flash drive. I recommend a clean installation of the OS instead of OS migration to get the best performance.
Another important thing is that after adding a new SSD, you need to initialize it manually to see it in the system. Open the Disk Management window from the control panel and initialize your new SSD with the GPT partition style if you’re planning to install a newer version of Windows.
Benefits of booting from an SSD
- Faster boot-ups
- Lag-free experience
- Quickly open programs
- Save battery
- Reduce noise
Add another RAM stick to enable dual-channel mode too (if possible)
It is always better to have two RAM sticks instead of just a single total RAM stick. Some motherboards and processors support the dual-chancel mode for faster memory access.



If you are planning to add another RAM stick, first make sure that your laptop motherboard has an additional RAM slot. Then consider the memory type which is very important to avoid compatibility issues. In my case, it’s DDR4 SODIMM. On my laptop, two memory channels are supported! However, only one channel is active now. This is because I’ve only one RAM stick. If I install another RAM stick, I can run on dual-channel mode.


With some modern motherboards, it is ACTUALLY possible to run two different RAM sticks on dual-channel mode. But the memory type should be the same. You can install two RAM sticks of the same memory type with different brands, clock speed and size. Both sticks will run on dual-channel mode, but the clock speed will be changed by the motherboard and system BIOS to match the clock speed of both RAMs. For example,
- Currently, you have one stick of RAM of 2933 MHz clock speed. You install a 3200 MHz RAM stick. In this case, there will be no performance loss. Both will work at 2933 MHz which is the initial clock speed.
- Currently, you have one stick of RAM of 3200 MHz clock speed. You install a 2933 MHz RAM stick. In this case, there will be a small performance loss. Both will work at 2933 MHz which is not the initial clock speed.
It is ALSO possible to put a RAM stick whose clock speed is higher than the speed supported by the motherboard. However, you cannot get the speed specified on the RAM stick label.
To avoid any performance loss, it is better to put a RAM stick whose clock speed is the same or higher than the currently installed one.
Adding more RAM will increase the performance of your system by enabling multitasking capabilities, but not as much as booting from an SSD.
Benefits of adding more RAM
- Improve multitasking
- Quickly open programs
- Faster memory access with dual-channel mode
Perform a clean installation of Windows
This is mandatory if your current Windows OS has malware, junk files and other types of issues that drastically reduce the performance of your system. A clean install will eliminate all these things. A clean install means that you wipe the entire disk or drive by deleting all the partitions and perfor a fresh installation of Windows. This will remove all the programs, drivers and data on your system. Therefore, you need to reinstall your system drivers and other third-party software after the clean installation. You need to back up all the data before the task.
To perform a clean installation of Windows, you need to download the Windows ISO file from the Microsoft official website. It is free to download. It can be downloaded through the Windows media creation tool. After downloading, you need to create a bootable USB from the ISO file. For this, you can use Rufus with its default settings. I recommend you keep the default setting to avoid any potential issues. The Windows media creation tool also has an option to make a bootable USB from the ISO file. If you like, you can use that option. If you want to create multiple bootable USB drives in the future also, just download the ISO file and use Refus as explained earlier.
Most laptops are sipped with Windows activated by the manufacturing company. In this case, the setup will not ask you to enter the product key during the new Windows installation process. It will automatically get from the system firmware.
Benefits of a clean install
- Remove viruses
- Remove junk files
- Remove unwanted programs
- Get the latest OS and other software
- Resolve compatibility issues of software
Safety tip
Blue light filtering feature for eyecare

Your old laptop screen will not have TÜV Rheinland’s certification for low blue light and flicker-free features. It means that it emits more blue light which will harm your eyes.
To avoid this, you need to buy a monitor that has blue light filtering Technology and a flicker-free screen and connect it to your existing laptop. Most modern monitors come with certified low-blue light, flicker-free screens.

How much do you need to spend performing these upgrades?
It may be around 1/15 of the price of a new laptop. You need to buy an additional SSD and RAM stick. I recommend you to perform the above methods as in the above order. These methods will increase the performance of your laptop significantly while saving your money!
One last thing. These are general instructions. To get the details specific to your laptop, I recommend you refer to the device manual or official web support.
Have you tried these methods and need some technical support? Please let me know in the comment section. I’ll help you as much as I can.
Thanks for reading!
Until next time, happy learning for everyone!
Special credit goes to XPS on Unsplash, **** who provided me with a nice cover image for this post.
Rukshan Pramoditha 2021–08–09