Y520 very slow performance

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Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
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10,510
Hello!

I'm on a Lenovo Legion Y520 laptop, and it is ~2 months old at this point.

It performs absolutely horribly.

The problem is that I can play Player Unknown Battlegrounds easily enough, but at low settings - I have come to terms with that, it doesn't bother me.

However, in several much much less demanding games, which I should be able to play easily, the CPU seems to spike to >99% which causes the game to stagger, and then crash.

I have checked with Malwarebytes, upgraded all drivers I could think off and nothing changes, and of course ran a ramtest which showed nothing.

And the temperatures are colder than my room (GPU is 40-50C in-game PUBG)

It's a:
GTX 1050 4gb card
i5-7300HQ CPU 2,5ghz
8gb DDR4 (1600hz)
Winblows 10 (If only I had a win7 usb..)

I know the laptop isn't the top model in any way, but it seems to me that it is performing well below what it should.
 
Solution
Z
First of all, the Windows system itself is most likely not the issue. That would have created quite an uproar and nobody would use such an OS. I personally wouldn't know how you could identify and solve this problem at this point without reinstalling windows to be honest.

Tip: Google "Windows 10 refresh tool" if you want a clean windows without creating a Installation disk or stick. Only works with W10 Anniversary Update or later.

And last but not least, even if you installed Windows 7 on that device, you would receive neither updates nor support for Windows from Microsoft, Lenovo or Intel, as the Intel Core 7000 series and later are only supported under Windows 10, and Microsoft disables Windows update if it detects one of these CPUs...
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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You certainly got way too much CPU usage, probably related to either malware or unwanted background processes in Windows. Maybe even Windows Defender (I have seen many cases of it eating one entire core for a good amount of time).

Can you open task manager while you are idling in Windows and see how much CPU is used? Ideally it should be between 0 and 5% all the time.
 
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Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
Yea defender takes a good deal, especially when installing things.

It's jumping around at 5-20% right now, idling except for google chrome.

It shows google stealing ~5-6% of those 5-20%.

I close chrome when gaming of course.

I also noticed something called COM Surrogate eating up almost 1gb of ram.




 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
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COM Surrogate is another name for the dllhost.exe process, which is used when a specific action is started by a process to be executed outside of the main process (hope this makes sense). It is used by the Windows Explorer to load Thumbnails for example. That means that if an error occurs loading the thumbnails, only the COM Surrogate process will crash and Windows Explorer (or whatever program started it will keep working.

The nature of this process makes it very complicated to determine who starts and uses this process. That's why malware loves utilizing such processes to hide itself. Which is why I'd also guess you got Malware on your PC.
 
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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Feb 17, 2009
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Yeah. At this point, it is hard to suggest anything smart, except to perform a clean install of windows from scratch, using the latest ISO build from the web. Avoid installing any 3rd party software at first, keep it at just the necessary drivers and "problematic" games, to test again.
 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
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I'd suggest running some malware scans to see whether you can find the culprit, e.g. AdwCleaner from Malwarebytes. Beware that AdwCleaner often lists a lot more than what you consider malware (it goes by the method "better include more potential threats than filter out anything"), so skim through the list it gives you and only delete what you're sure you don't need ;)

If that doesn't work, you'll probably look at a fresh windows isntall though...
 
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Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
Thanks so far everyone.

I rescanned with Malwarebytes, and it found something called atozmanuals-something in temp files and though adobe_reader was a virus. So after the reboot I tried to troublesome games again, but it didn't help.

Is there any chance this is a winblows 10 issue? Because I really hate this interface but I was forced to get it, since you can't buy laptops without OS in Denmark for some reason. But I know I have a win7 iso somewhere on my stationary PC, so if you guys think that might help I'll try it.
 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
1
1,360
First of all, the Windows system itself is most likely not the issue. That would have created quite an uproar and nobody would use such an OS. I personally wouldn't know how you could identify and solve this problem at this point without reinstalling windows to be honest.

Tip: Google "Windows 10 refresh tool" if you want a clean windows without creating a Installation disk or stick. Only works with W10 Anniversary Update or later.

And last but not least, even if you installed Windows 7 on that device, you would receive neither updates nor support for Windows from Microsoft, Lenovo or Intel, as the Intel Core 7000 series and later are only supported under Windows 10, and Microsoft disables Windows update if it detects one of these CPUs on Win7 or 8.
 
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Solution
A

Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
Oh well, I guess I'll have to learn to live with win10.

I will attempt a reinstall when I get a hold of a USB stick that can act as a personal document backup.

There is no CD-drive in the Y520, but if I recall Microsoft has a tool to create bootable USB drives, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Can I get the ISO from their website, using the productkey that came with the PC?
 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
1
1,360
Yes, the Microsoft Media Creation Tool can do that. But other tools like Rufus can do the job too.

As you said, download the ISO for the correct edition of Windows, and when you install it, use the key that came with your PC.

Though I'll repeat that the Windows 10 Refresh Tool can do the same job without creating a bootable windows installation media. The tool will also allow you to retain all personal documents and data, only all non-Windows programs will get deleted ;)
 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
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I'll admit that I never used it to remove malware so far, since I've yet to get malware onto my PC since I upgraded to Windows 10... I'd honestly still try it first as you can do a complete reinstall anytime later, but if in doubt, the complete reinstall is probably the safest bet.
 
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Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
But this Refresh Tool, will it remove all the bloatware that came with the laptop? Because I was wondering if something in all the lenovo-crap could cause this. Though it is not evident that it does when looking at RAM/CPU/HDD usage.



 
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Z

ZRace

Commendable
May 12, 2017
521
1
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It should, as long as Lenovo didn't find a way to make Windows think the bloatware is an integrated Windows app.

But if herrwizo is right, it may not remove existent malware. You can still try it, but if it doesn't help, a complete reinstall is all I can think of.
 
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A

Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
Okay, I'll give the refresh tool a try if I can find it (PC is not English and I hate it). I'll try this first to see if it helps!



 
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A

Anders Kiiehn Hansen

Honorable
Jun 4, 2013
14
0
10,510
Update for ZRace and herrwizo:

The update tool did remove all the nonsense that Lenovo had installed (nifty tool for future laptop purchases!!) but it didn't solve my problem.

I didn't try the clean install, because I think I found the problem.

I noticed a change after the refresh and the re-download/update of all the drivers and such. It appears it was a conflict between the GPU and the intel HD-graphics or whatever it's called. The intel GPU had been removed or at least malfunctioned, but now it seems to work fine, and games that shouldn't have lagged before, I now run at HIGH/Ultra depending.

I don't know why the fault happened though, but it must have been related to that. Maybe the CPU miscommunicated with the rest and wasn't used to full effect somehow? I'm not really all that into the newer hardware (read I havn't built a PC in 6 years).

Thanks alot for the help!
 
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