Your laptop is running very slowly, especially with Chrome.
Your laptop is running very slowly, especially with Chrome.
Been using an old Dell XPS 9550 for a long time with Windows Ten Pro. Back then it ran smoothly and quickly. At the time, its specs were i5-6300hq, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 32GB NVMe, barely used. It stayed fast even after years of heavy use—could handle many Chrome tabs and stream YouTube without lag. Mostly used it for online poker. Eventually, the SSD got almost full, so I upgraded to more RAM, swapped in a larger NVMe drive, and replaced the old batteries. Now it’s i5-6300hq with 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD, and a bigger battery. It’s still good but I think upgrading RAM would be better.
Later, I think my laptop could be infected because I clicked on a link and Windows Defender spotted some threats. But I thought it was just a false alarm since the program that appeared was one I had installed long ago. I ended up purchasing Kaspersky Total out of concern. When I scanned it, I didn’t find any threats, viruses, or malware. Still, I decided to perform a clean reinstall just in case.
After doing this, it was quite a hassle. I had to download drivers for another PC and use a USB stick to connect my laptop since Wi-Fi wasn’t detected. Then I reinstalled Kaspersky Total again and downloaded many of the programs I normally used. I realized I’d missed backing up my system, which made the process even more complicated.
Now I’m wondering if cleaning the system was necessary. I remember feeling uneasy because I knew malware could still be present. After reinstalling, my laptop seemed to run slower when many Chrome tabs were open. This lag was unusual for me—back then, I’d usually have only a few tabs running at once, and Chrome would still work smoothly.
I noticed that opening YouTube videos caused the lag, especially when multiple tabs were active. Previously, with 50+ Chrome tabs open, I experienced noticeable slowdowns, but now even opening just one video felt sluggish. The issue persisted even after a clean install, which made me think Kaspersky Total might be contributing.
I had used free versions of Windows Defender and Malwarebytes without problems, but the situation changed after the reinstall. I considered turning off Windows Defender temporarily to see if the lag improved, or maybe disabling Chrome extensions to test. I also wondered about background refresh issues or other factors like browser settings.
My concern was whether Kaspersky Total could be causing these problems. Since I’d previously relied on free tools and they worked fine, it felt odd that reinstalling would lead to such issues. I wasn’t sure if my system was truly clean or if something else was at play.
What threads will you share, and will each be lengthy or concise?