my laptop (HP Stream, ) regularly struggles to open word documents and needs restarting frequently. It constantly complains about having not enough storage despite me constantly deleting everything that isnt nailed down (i cant delete certain stuff like resumes, certificates and stuff, but theyre pretty small right??). My task manager also almost always has 100% for cpu and 85% for memory even with only 1 tab open. Basically what I’m asking is: do i just suck it up and get a new work laptop, or is this fixable?
p.s. im new to reddit and have no idea what a flair is so if i used the wrong one plz dont get mad at me
New laptop time. The HP Stream was never meant to do actual work other than be a Chromebook with a proper operating system.
Some HP Stream models are shipped with 64 GB eMMC which is the bare minimum for Windows 10 & 11. Use the built-in clean-up tools, then run
Compact.exe /CompactOS:alwaysfrom terminal with admin rights (basically just search forcmdin Start then right click run as admin) to compress some of the system files, and use TreeSizeFree to find folders/apps that are hogging space, then compress (it’s still accessible by apps, but don’t do this on Windows Boot folder, or the entire C partition) or remove them.As for CPU and RAM maxing out, that’s the way it is, it comes with a bare minimum CPU and RAM, and even switching to Linux won’t help much because browsers are resource hogs.
If you’re losing time from having to wait and restart all the time, you’re better off just getting a decent laptop with SSD, Intel i3 or Ryzen 3, and at least 8 GB of RAM. Even if you’re not an employee (where they should have provided you a good enough laptop), if you’re making even the minimum wage, the time saved would pay itself in a month or so.
That’s not a laptop, that’s a paperweight. Change it, and if you want ask in r/computers for advice with your budget.
How old is the pc? If it’s older than 7 years then yeah just get a new one.
I would look in storage settings. It shows the break down of what’s holding all your data in simple terms. You might be surprised and find some unimportant things you can delete. Good luck 👍