Help! My ageing HP G61 laptop has been running slower and slower, becoming almost unuseable.
I bought a 250Gb Samsung EVO 860 SSD. I successfully cloned the old HDD (although the slow laptop meant this took about 8 hours!). I've installed the new SDD, and it is all working. But it is still slow. Quicker to boot than before. But still slow.
I thought I'd then try doing the Windows 10 reset or clean install thing. But I'm hitting all sorts of problems now:
1. I created a system recovery USB before swapping the disks over. I've tried doing the Windows 10 reset thing from there. But got a message saying: "Could not find the recovery environment: Insert your Windows installation or recovery media, and restart your PC with the media".
2. I've tried booting up from the USB (it took me a while to figure out how to force the machine to do that) - and at this point I tried a clean install. But I got an error message telling me something like "The disk is too small". It doesn't make clear whether this is my SSD or my USB stick. But neither would make sense. I have a 250Gb SSD. And the USB Recovery Drive is already created.
3. I wondered whether the issue was having created the Recovery Drive before I swapped out the HDD. So tried creating it again now I have installed the SDD. Now I get an error message saying "We can't create a recovery drive on this PC: Some required files are missing. To troubleshoot problems when your PC can't start, use your Windows installation disk or media"!!!
I'm basically stuck in a loop that I can't get out of.
One thing that occurs may be the problem is that when I cloned the HDD, I saw there was a recovery partition of some kind (Drive D
. As I had just created a Recovery USB, I didn't think this was important. So I didn't select to clone this. (I think I could have, but am not sure). I've also since read that there are "hidden" partitions in Windows 10 that are something to do with recovery.
I still have the HDD I swapped out. So I could just go back to that and start again with the (slow and painful) cloning process if that is the best thing to do.
Or is there some other way I can break this loop? Do I, for example, need to download the "clean install Windows 10" files from Microsoft and boot from those? But given the problems above, will this risk completely screwing the machine by losing all the drivers and all that stuff. I kind of wanted to use the supposedly quick, easy and safe "Windows reset" option.
I do at least have the advantage of a working (slowly) HDD I can swap back to. I have also backed up all my personal files and data to an external drive. So the risk of losing data is at least not an issue.
I would be grateful for any help - tailored to an amateur without masses of computer maintenance knowledge. I have Googled and looked around. And while I've found some evidence of people having similar kinds of problems, none of the answers seem to quite match my situation.
Thanks in advance,
Robert
I bought a 250Gb Samsung EVO 860 SSD. I successfully cloned the old HDD (although the slow laptop meant this took about 8 hours!). I've installed the new SDD, and it is all working. But it is still slow. Quicker to boot than before. But still slow.
I thought I'd then try doing the Windows 10 reset or clean install thing. But I'm hitting all sorts of problems now:
1. I created a system recovery USB before swapping the disks over. I've tried doing the Windows 10 reset thing from there. But got a message saying: "Could not find the recovery environment: Insert your Windows installation or recovery media, and restart your PC with the media".
2. I've tried booting up from the USB (it took me a while to figure out how to force the machine to do that) - and at this point I tried a clean install. But I got an error message telling me something like "The disk is too small". It doesn't make clear whether this is my SSD or my USB stick. But neither would make sense. I have a 250Gb SSD. And the USB Recovery Drive is already created.
3. I wondered whether the issue was having created the Recovery Drive before I swapped out the HDD. So tried creating it again now I have installed the SDD. Now I get an error message saying "We can't create a recovery drive on this PC: Some required files are missing. To troubleshoot problems when your PC can't start, use your Windows installation disk or media"!!!
I'm basically stuck in a loop that I can't get out of.
One thing that occurs may be the problem is that when I cloned the HDD, I saw there was a recovery partition of some kind (Drive D
. As I had just created a Recovery USB, I didn't think this was important. So I didn't select to clone this. (I think I could have, but am not sure). I've also since read that there are "hidden" partitions in Windows 10 that are something to do with recovery.I still have the HDD I swapped out. So I could just go back to that and start again with the (slow and painful) cloning process if that is the best thing to do.
Or is there some other way I can break this loop? Do I, for example, need to download the "clean install Windows 10" files from Microsoft and boot from those? But given the problems above, will this risk completely screwing the machine by losing all the drivers and all that stuff. I kind of wanted to use the supposedly quick, easy and safe "Windows reset" option.
I do at least have the advantage of a working (slowly) HDD I can swap back to. I have also backed up all my personal files and data to an external drive. So the risk of losing data is at least not an issue.
I would be grateful for any help - tailored to an amateur without masses of computer maintenance knowledge. I have Googled and looked around. And while I've found some evidence of people having similar kinds of problems, none of the answers seem to quite match my situation.
Thanks in advance,
Robert
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