Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete (all at the same time), when the next screen comes up select Task Manager. With the processes tab showing Click on the CPU column header, this will sort the list by percentage of CPU used. This will show what processes are using most of your CPU. The Performance tab is useful also.
check your device manager, could be your fan and/or your video card.
use process explorer to get more details. Free program that will give you better clues.
What OS are you running?
Nowadays, a 2-core CPU is going to choke out because developers have generally forgotten how to write software.
What kind of antivirus and operating system are you running? Could be malware running in background using your computer for nefarious purposes.
Run antimalwarebytes free, spybot free...
What is your cooling method? Have you checked Temps during these slowdowns? Generally speaking I wouldn’t think this was a cpu problem, but checking temps would help rule it out. I would guess you have malware, or a “antivirus” program that does its best to be like malware and that is causing your slowdowns.
Clear your cache for your browser.
Also, do cnt-alt-del and click on task manager.
Click on Start and check for any odd craplets running. Disable them by right mouse click.
You also may want to look through your running programs and see if there is any malware running. Malwarebytes is your friend.
There is also a troubleshooter somewhere in the settings. I am not near my Windows10 computer right now, or, I would find it for you.
Don’t listen to the naysayers. Windows 10 is a great OS and really will improve how your computer works. It did on mine.
I’ve found that on my system firefox runs noticeably slower than chrome. For an easy experiment, install chrome. If you don’t see any difference just delete it.
Try using the Brave Browser. It has the best ad blocker software I have seen.
It drastically reduces the load time of websites. And will reduce the CPU usage of your browser.
Your system may also just be trying to do an update. Check there too.
Also Google drive will gobble up all your CPU until in syncs...which it does every time it turns on. I pause it whenever I can.
Conan speaks truth
Malwarebytes is your friend.
If it is a 32 bit operating system it cannot utilize more than 4GB of ram. 64 bit OS can utilize more. Just throwing troubleshooting mud on the wall....
Clear your browser history of EVERYTHING.
At the top here it says HISTORY. Click and press CLEAR RECENT HISTORY. EVERYTHING. Watch the CPU and wait a couple seconds. CPU should drop significantly.
This will mean you will have to re-login to each website.
Try this for a start.
8 gigabytes of memory sounds like a lot but it all depends on what OS your using,what utilities and antivirus programs are running in the background and what kind of ads are running when your using your browser.
Some of those ads will kill your cpu performance big time.
Install Ublock Origin and Gostery as plug ins in a plain vanilla firefox. Breitbart, a particularly slow loading site went from more than 5 seconds to sub half second.
These two plugins block the adds and data analytics on the web.
The hard drive may be going bad. Had any shocks or hits to the computer? Once it gets going damage increases exponentially over time and sectors start going bad faster than the system can mark them. It slows down the system because the error recovery on the data takes a lot of processing. Also the computer caches data to the hard drive and when it stores to damaged areas that cache is ruined so it burns CPU cycles rebuilding the lost data that was supposed to let it quickly pick up on a task where it left off.
When my computers mysteriously start slowing and I cannot trace it to a specific program it is the HDD failing.
If you are running hot try cleaning out dust with compressed air.
When my computer chokes up an runs slow, a quick check of Task Manager shows it is almost always someone (usually Microsoft or Adobe) force downloading an update while I’m trying to work.
Second guess is a virus; run a full Windows Defender scan overnight and see if anything turns up. Follow up with the free versions of Malwarebytes and Spybot; if all 3 show nothing, you are probably fine on the malware/spyware/virus front.
Other than heat/overheating, my best guess is that after clearing your internet cache/history, then you may need an updated network controller driver. Determine what the controller is (wired/wireless), find what make/model it is (you should be able to figure this out in the properties page of the controller by going through the network and sharing center) and then look for an updated driver. Otherwise search for a tutorial on how to determine what NIC or wireless card you have.
Might be easiest to go to Lenovo’s website and let them figure it out for you or enter the tag number/whatever there.
Yes, by all means check Task Manager.
But, I have to laugh about all of the comments asking you to check cooling, because of something that happened to a hardware-challenged friend a dozen or so years ago.
This guy was a software guy with a particular expertise in Lotus Notes. But, his computer started to exhibit this behavior where it would run for a few minutes, slow down, and then start to make all sorts of errors. His other software friends had him play with the disk, make new “clean” partitions, etc., but nothing helped.
So, I was over there with my high-school kids, and we decided to take the cover off (it was a full-size tower). Yep... it was the cooling. So much lint had accumulated that the fan had burned out completely, and the video card (which was on a phenolic rather than fiberglass substrate) had huge brown burn marks.
We vacuumed it out, put in a new fan, and it was good to go. My friend was totally humiliated watching my kids yuck it up when they saw the problem.
So, by all means check your cooling. By itself, you wouldn’t expect cooling to make you use 90% of CPU when you load a page, but if you’re throttled down ... well that’s different because the CPU would be running at half speed.
Again, Task Manager first, physical inspection next.