Windows – Some Portions of Computer Running Slow (Specifically Graphics)

lagperformancewindows 7

I noticed that a few things are running slow today on my Windows 7 laptop. Specifically, they are:

  • Opening and closing windows takes several seconds for the animation to complete.
  • Windows media player opens fine, but the movies are very laggy
  • MMORPGs are extremely laggy
  • When waking my computer from sleep mode, after entering my password, my desktop takes about 3 seconds to fade in

Other than those, everything runs at a normal speed.

Things I've done that maybe contributed to this problem:

  • Changed the graphics processor (by plugging in/unplugging the charger) [however, no matter how I change the graphics, I'm still getting this lagginess]
  • Installed AdBlock, a Firefox addon [I recently removed it, and I'm still experiencing this problem]
  • Went into Advanced System Settings, Clicked Settings, and unchecked a few visual things (such as the animation for opening and closing windows) [sure, this got rid of the opening/closing windows lag, but I like that little animation – plus that leaves all the other lag problems I'm experiencing]

So, does anyone have any ideas/fixes? If so, please respond. Thank you.

Some Other Information:

  • I'm on a HP Pavillion dv7 laptop, 4285 Entertainment PC, with: intel CORE i5 inside, ATI Mobility Radeon Premium Graphics, Microsoft DirectX11
  • Opening and closing of windows: Defined as opening a program (i.e. Firefox) or closing it by hitting the X in the upper-right hand corner. Lately, the animation for opening and closing windows (which is simply either growing from the icon from the taskbar to fill the screen, or shrinking from the screen down towards the icon on the toolbar.) This problem also occurs for minimizing/maximizing windows.
  • Very laggy movies: defined as .avi movie files saved to My Documents which skips several frames per second and seemingly slows down the movie as a whole
  • Extremely laggy games: I tried playing an MMORPG today, and movement in the game was at least 10x slower than it ever has been, even when playing on the lowest detail/graphics
  • Desktop taking 3 seconds to fade in after sleep: in this scenario, I had no other programs running visibly. The computer generally fades to black from the password screen to the desktop in about 1 second, normally. However, it is now taking 3 or more seconds.

Best Answer

I had a similar problem. I'm using a Sony Vaio E Series laptop. My specs are:

  • Windows 7 Home Premium -64 bit
  • Intel Core i3 M 370 processor
  • 4 GB RAM
  • ATI radeon 500GB graphics card

My problem was this: I had a slow working graphics (minimizing & maximizing windows, all games where running slow etc). But there was NO ISSUE with the computer's other performance like copying files, web browsing etc. And this slow-graphics problem would kick start randomly, like say, never for 3 days, every time you boot after shutting down in the same day. And the problem always got corrected after a restart.

Then, what I noticed was, when I do my booting (not restarting, the first boot after you shut down, for example in the morning :D) after disconnecting all USB devices (ext hard disks, cooling pads, usb modems etc.) there was NO graphics lag at all and this is what i am doing now.

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