Laptop's running slow after repair

I hit a Blue Screen of Death, and since I’ve got a three-year warranty, I went in to get it fixed. My laptop is about eighteen months old—they swapped out the hard drive and put Linux back on it because that’s how it was originally shipped. Once I installed Windows, though, the performance became absolutely abysmal. It is painfully slow. If I open more than two tabs in a browser, the whole thing just freezes up... it used to be incredibly snappy, capable of handling multiple programs and dozens of tabs without breaking a sweat.

Should I file a formal complaint? Am I entitled to have them swap this for a faster drive? Working on this machine is practically impossible.🙂
I honestly have a PC from 2003 that outperforms this thing.

Thanks.🙂

What kind of laptop are you running, and which version of Windows is installed? Do you actually prefer Windows, or have you made the jump to Linux?

This might sound like a bit of a silly question—but have you actually gone through and installed all the drivers yet? I'm talking specifically about the graphics card ones.

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Could you share the specs for that laptop? Or better yet—just let me know the manufacturer and the specific model number.

HP laptop, model 3737
I installed the drivers—and I definitely prefer macOS
It was working perfectly fine on macOS before... for over a year now...
I haven't changed anything or done anything out of the ordinary...
Is there any way to file a complaint? Is it possible they installed some inferior version?
A friend of mine who works in IT set up the macOS—he said it took hours😲—and he mentioned that something isn't right, that it's just too slow...
Right now, it isn't quite as sluggish as it was this morning; I can manage more tabs, but it’s still incredibly slow...

Looks like your buddy might have gone rogue and manually installed every driver from the official sites... Can you pull up Device Manager and check if everything is actually installed correctly? Look for any yellow warning icons or question marks.

Also, check how much RAM the laptop is actually reporting. I want to make sure a stick didn't just pop out of its slot, leaving you running on some weird reserve mode or whatever...

Either way, something's clearly broken. You should probably get back in touch with that repair shop where the laptop was and let them know what's going on.

Is this it?
And where am I supposed to check my RAM...

Honestly, seeing this makes me wonder how your friend even considers himself an IT guy. He installed macOS but skipped all the essential drivers. Either you weren't connected to the internet so macOS didn't pull the updates, or auto-update is just turned off...

Go here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ed/...s#driverupdate

and click on "Autodetect your product."

HP has really solid support, so you should end up on a page looking something like this:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ed/...7-3737/drivers

or maybe this one:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ed/...-3737/diagnose

Your best bet is to run that full autodiagnostics tool. It takes a little longer, but it'll scan the whole system thoroughly and handle all the necessary driver and software updates for you. Everything should be fine after that. Just make sure when you're picking which OS you need drivers for—if it asks—that you select the exact version of macOS you're running: Win 7, 8, 8.1, or 10, and it's super important to pick the right 32 or 64-bit version...

The Memory Your Memory is probably fine; the issues are coming from those unrecognized devices. macOS is basically hunting for them blindly, which is why everything is taking forever and acting glitchy.

Otherwise, you can just grab some free CPU-Z (CPUID) from somewhere and install it. That'll give you the basic specs on what's actually inside your machine...

Or maybe just hand it off to someone who can take a quick look and figure out what's actually going on. My buddy isn't exactly a tech expert, but his best guess was that something is definitely broken—and I'm not even talking about missing drivers here.

Just don't take it apart, since the laptop is still under warranty. If installing the drivers doesn't fix it, then just send it back to the service center. That diagnostic tool should tell you exactly what the issue is...

Thanks—but he told me it only took him a few hours to install macOS, which he claimed was way too slow... as if something wasn't quite right...

This morning, I had over 260 updates running before the laptop even booted up. Now, I’ve checked the Device Manager again and that yellow warning icon is still there. I did go ahead and manually install the network and graphics drivers a few days back...
What else am I missing here? And honestly, I'm not sure if I should be hunting down audio drivers or input drivers as well. So, I have those four drivers on the laptop now and they are ready to go...

I just finished installing the HP Support Assistant

Recommended:
General maintenance
Memory
Your memory module seems to be functioning fine—for now. That said, this particular diagnostic isn't capable of catching every single memory failure. If you have a gut feeling that your memory module is acting up, you should probably run a memory stress test to uncover those hidden issues... Run memory stress test.
Note: Depending on how much memory your device actually has, this test might take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to finish.
The hard Drive
The hard drive(s) inside your system are currently operational. Quite often, though, it's just the applications running on your computer that trigger performance problems...

You might want to try Microsoft Fix IT for resolving slow performance issues.
It could also be worth reviewing this HP Knowledge base article regarding how to check if system software is the actual culprit.

If you're running any anti-virus or anti-malware software, I'd suggest scanning your system just to rule out an active infection.
VideoCard
Your device passed all the diagnostics. Keep in mind that, occasionally, video performance issues stem from outdated software or drivers...

Look into downloading the latest driver version from HP’s Drivers and Downloads.
Certain common video and gaming issues can sometimes be sorted out using this Microsoft Fix IT application for Windows video and game issues.
If the problem is limited to one specific application, you should probably contact that application's vendor for help troubleshooting...
This diagnostic might miss intermittent issues. You should consider running the "video Stress" component diagnostic instead. It launches a much longer, more strenuous test of the video card which might actually uncover a hardware fault.

this is what they told me after the test...

This is all pretty general stuff, looks like there aren't any hardware failures here. Regarding that other link, can he just check the drivers himself to see if anything is missing or out of date?