XPS 8930, very slow

More memory won't have the much of an effect on speed.  If the system is running on a hard drive (mechanical), replacing that with a solid state drive will make far more of an impact.

@ejn63​ thanks for the help, I'll not both with the memory. I understand that SSD is faster than HDD and will speed things up, but why would my HDD that was working fine cause the slow down?

If the drive is original to the system, it's beyond its design life -- one cause could be a failing drive.

@ukyeti​ 

Replacing a mechanical hard drive with an SSD will not speed up your PC other than load 'some' programs faster (one on that SSD) and decrease boot time. 

You were complaining about overall speed, "It runs very slowly, not just on boot up but all the time.". Once a program loads, and it is running, the SSD will not matter other than read/writing data to a disk drive, and again, only does it faster if it is to an SSD.

You've got some other problems there.

Have you opened Task Manager and checked the CPU and DISK for high percentage of use? Either at 100% will kill performance.

Did you make computer changes just prior to this happening, opened the case and cleaned out 'dust bunnies' and maybe loosened something?

Add/Remove/Change some hardware.

Add new S/W.

Any of these could change operational performance.

Thanks. In Task Manager, total processor utilization is at c.7-10%, memory usage c.30-40% and disk utilization c.50%. I didn't make any changes to software, hardware, etc. The slowdown was gradual over a year or so but has got to the point of barely usable.

If this system is running a spinning hard drive, it's amazing that it has performed acceptably for as long as it has.  Windows 10 and 11 really need a native SSD to perform well.

See above - the solution to the issue is to replace the hard drive with an SSD.

@ukyeti​ 

In Task Manager, look at the PERFORMANCE tab... Possible if you have more than one Disk, it is at 100%. Press the three bars on the left under Task Manager to see the names of the left menu items.

Now select anything on the right side, Memory, Disk, CPU, etc., doesn't matter. Once that opens on the top right is three dots. Click on that and then choose Resource Monitor. It will give you a better view of what is going on and 'who' is using the most resources.

With 30 - 40% of RAM being used, that sort of rules out swapping, which can slow a system down.

If you select Memory, make sure it shows 16GB.

However, I'd think you'd be using more than 30 - 40%? That is pretty minimal, less than 8GB's? I guess that is consistent though vs. my wife's XPS8500 with only 8GB. She's got 4 programs actively loaded, and all the startup programs and what the OS load, and it shows 87%.

Even on her system, slower than yours with an SSD for booting, it only slows down when memory is exhausted. That rarely happens though. Once Windows fills RAM, it knows which was not used recently, and if it is a file that can be reloaded, it re-uses that RAM, otherwise, it would swap it out. Her swap drive IS a Mechanical Hard drive, using an SSD for that might improve performance slightly though.

It's hard for me to believe an SSD doesn't speed up a PC with faster read/write speeds.  It does make a PC more responsive.

When my mother's previous PC slowed down, her games worked slowly and were slow to respond.  She now has had my previous Optiplex 7010 for 2 years, of course, with an SSD.  It surprised her to see her games work instantly.  Even faster NVME and m.2 drives weren't made just for boot times.

Win10 loads faster on an SSD and updates go faster.  Otherwise, on an HDD, they're painfully slow.

@ukyeti​ 

If you hadn't just loaded Win11, I'd suggest using Microsoft's free cleanup tool.  Not that it doesn't work with Win11, just that it's good for a PC that has slowed down over time.

@bradthetechnut​ 

It's hard for me to believe an SSD doesn't speed up a PC with faster read/write speeds.  It does make a PC more responsive.

Really? You will only see a performance improvement when the DISK is being read or written too. Otherwise, the PC will operate at its rated performance.

Possible your mother either was swapping or some background process was accessing the drive and using CPU cycles. Adding an SSD would not help, unless the disk was accessed that slowed the system down.

Yes, wife's XPS8500 with a boot SSD loads Windows almost as fast as my XPS8940. But the speed of loading difference is due to the faster CPU I have.

My wife's XPS has 8GB's of RAM, and when that fills, her performance can go down as data is written to RAM. Suspect your mother's PC has less (or slower) RAM than the PC you gave her, and that will make a world of difference.

An SSD will only improve disk read/write time vs. a mechanical drive. Any program that needs to do this WILL perform better with an SSD as the target drive. It will NOT help when disk access is not happening.

The OP stated 'all the time', and the SSD will not fix that alone. Something else is the culprit.

@ispalten​ 

So you can load games and programs and unplug the HDD and everything will run fine?  After all, it's all in the RAM and CPU?

@bradthetechnut​ 

No, basically that is what you are saying,... swap the Mechanical drive for an SSD and everything runs at top performance.

What the OP said is "it runs very slowly, not just on boot up but all the time."

@ispalten​ 

So you can load games and programs and unplug the HDD and everything will run fine?  After all, it's all in the RAM and CPU?

Where did I say this?

Let me be clear, Replacing a Hard Drive with an SSD will not overall performance when there is no disk access. Replacing a BOOT Hard Drive will improve boot time and loading of any program or data on the SSD. Do so will make the PC feel more responsive and you will load a program faster than with an Hard Drive, but hardly save more than a few seconds depending on the data needing to be read off the drive. It will not improve performance when there is no disk access needed.

This isn't old news either, see ---> https://superuser.com/questions/1098978/why-doesnt-an-ssd-improve-the-speed-of-running-applications-compared-to-a-hdd

Now it is possible we got off on the wrong foot here. So I'll ask are you saying just swapping in the SSD will 'fix' the OP's problem of overall slowness on the PC, or are you suggesting a way to improve some parts of the general performance issue?

I'd say that adding RAM is more the cure and an SSD, but OP says only

Then @ejn63 speculated it was an failing Hard Drive and replace it with an SSD.

You also stated this, "It's hard for me to believe an SSD doesn't speed up a PC with faster read/write speeds.  It does make a PC more responsive."

It only makes it more responsive in loading programs or reading/writing data or downloads.

Assuming the OP is correct how the PC performs, running slowly means PROGRAMS operate slowly. Web pages load slowly...

Think of it this way, wants to play MS Solitaire... and it takes some time to open. YES, and SSD will help here. Now he wants to move a card to another pile, the movement is slow. SSD or Hard drive has NOTHING to do with the program performance. Replacing the Hard drive with an SSD will NOT improve that, UNLESS OP is low on RAM and the OS starts swapping, in this case, and SSD will improve performance WHEN Swapping is happening.

Possible the CPU is overloaded operating on other processes and the time slice given to a program is small and with many processes getting time performance suffers. Again, has probably nothing to do with Disk Access, but if it did, the Performance tab on Task Manager would show high hard drive activity, Check OP's response on what the Performance tab showed, plenty of availability on the CPU and Disk. An SSD will not change this. RAM usage is below 50% so that adding RAM might not be the fix. Last would be running Processes and even here, only 10% of CPU used, so it has to be something else, but using an SSD is not the answer.

@ispalten  Thank you for your contributions.  Even though you're probably right, I'm still with @ejn63 that an SSD is a good place to start.  After all, it doesn't seem to be the RAM or CPU.

@ukyeti  Another good place to start is replace the size 2032 MB battery if it's 5+ years old.  The 8930 probably still has the original battery.

If still no luck, go into the F12 Boot & Diagnostics menu and run diagnostics.  This can also be done with the HDD still installed.

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. I think I’ll try switching to an SSD, recognizing that it won’t solve everything, as any improvement would be helpful.

I looked at the more detailed performance tabs in the task manager and noticed that disk activity stays at 100% for a few minutes after boot and/or loading a program, which I assumes points to issues with the disk. Other stats seem fine.

I did see the hint about the motherboard battery on another forum, but the system date/time hasn’t reset, which I assume points to it’s ok. But I may as well replace it while I’m doing the disk.

Thanks!

Low batteries affect BIOS and therefore PC operation.  They can go low without the date/time reset coming up.  Date/time reset may not come up until the battery is dead or severely low.  The battery can always be tested also.