More of a general Q/A, a mix of opinion and technical.

I used to own a Win 8 laptop. An earlier laptop that used to run XP (like 9 years ago). The Win 8 laptop is dead. And I install Win 7 on the 9 year old laptop just as a temporary measure while buying my (current Win 10 laptop).

Here is the thing. The laptop is brand new - but it is slow and unresponsive like heck. Everything takes time. I've installed Chrome. Something that is instant on my 9 year old laptop (Win 7)for example opening a new tab is taking around 30 sec.

Clicking on the wifi icon, it takes 43 sec before the list of wi-fi appears.

Cliking on the magnifying glass takes 31 sec before it open and i can search app.

And starting (or swithing) to new app will almost always gives me the "Not Responding" for a while.  

It was so freaking slow I was wondering if the shop actually stole my cpu and replaced it slower but compatible ones. So I downloaded Intel CPU tools. So I run Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. But here is the strange things happens. The CPU is rarely above 5%. Around 2% to 4%.

So what gives? What is the issue?

Anyone have this experience before and how do you solve it?

It could also be incorrect chipset drivers - try the latest drivers from the manufacturers website.

So you have a brand new factory-fresh laptop with Window 10? 

If you don't have too much stuff on it, my recommendation is to wipe it clean.  Make sure you record all the custom slow drivers and buggy adware crap and the seven trial-version antivirus programs. Note down all the crapware that comes from Dell and the spyware installed through Lenovo and all the rest.  Then wipe it all clean.

Once you've got a truly clean installation, install only the drivers that are missing.  I don't mean the ones where the generic is used instead of the brand ones, but devices that have no default drivers at all.

Many of the fancy drivers (like the ever-common Realtek drivers) are notorious for making performance plummet.  Same is true for the crapware that comes pre-installed.

On 12/5/2017 at 1:44 AM, FableFox said:

So what gives? What is the issue?

That's not very much information to work with.  You need to diagnose the issue.

Run 'Resource Monitor' and watch what is using CPU, disk, network.  See if there's anything obviously hogging resources.  Perhaps you are running out of physical RAM?  Performance usually drops off a cliff if that happens.

Run 'View reliability history' and see how many errors/warnings/installations have happened recently.

On the 5th, I got some Windows Updates, so your computer might be dealing with those.

You might have missing drivers.  Find and install them.  Main things to check for severe performance issues are motherboard chipset drivers and GPU drivers.

You might have a hardware problem (the hard drive is most likely for your symptoms if no software ends up being responsible).  Search the internet to see if you can find tools for testing your hardware.  There are usually tools that can test each dedicated piece of hardware for their performance.  Try those.

Your BIOS might need to be updated, but it's unlikely if this is a new computer.

If you have an SSD, check what kind it is and look for reports about performance or stability problems.

Check to see if your virus scanner is doing a full disk scan.  If you're using Kaspersky, get rid of that shit immediately as it will bring your computer to its knees when it's doing a full scan.

42 minutes ago, Bregma said:

Give up.  Install Linux.  Never look back.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

Thanks for all the tips. Still investigating this issues myself.

It seems I'm not the only one with this problems.

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/415231/aspire-es-15-running-slow-brand-new

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/284036/new+laptop+is+slow+-+unhappy+with+performance

It's sad really as I personally like Acer hardware. The 9 year old is an Acer and not once do I need to send for repair. Only bought a new battery every 3 years or something.

Yeah, it still catching up on the updates. Win 10 really made me mad there. Win 8 has size, download speed and downloaded amount if I remember correctly. Now it replaced with percentage - which barely moves.

RAM is not a problem since I already upgrade from 4 to 8 as part of the purchase.

Thanks Frob for the info on drivers. I'll check if there is new versions.

@Bregma, My day job is DBA. I used to install Ubuntu on that 9 year old Acer. Kinda loves it, except when I visit website that uses Flash. It made the OS unresponsive around 4 to 5 minutes. But Adobe is ending Flash so I guess it's a moot point now. But I used it for 2 years - the problem is that currently in my work environment, I just need to use MS Office.   For compatibility with other people using same documents.  

Thanks for all the input. Reformat is my last option (probably will do on the new year holiday).  I'll see if Microsoft iso download tool enable me to download a clean Win 10 iso.

Aspire ES 15 - did you get one with a 1TB 5400rpm hard drive?  That might be what's slow, especially if there's a lot of disk activity.  Check that in Resource Monitor.  Consider upgrading to an SSD if you can afford it and if the laptop supports it.

Absolutely check all activity in Resource Monitor.  If there's some preinstalled crap on it you will be able to see that show up and you should uninstall anything that can't play nicely with the rest of the computer.  This usually includes virus scanners.

Another random thing to check:  Do you have any kind of full-disk-encryption software running?  BitLocker or anything like that?  If so, you could try disabling that as well.