I've got a Dell Inspiron 15 3515 with an AMD Ryzen 5 3450U processor and Radeon Vega Mobile graphics, running on Windows 11. I mainly use it for basic tasks like email and browsing, but I also do some casual gaming, which it usually handles okay. Recently, however, everything changed. Just two days ago, the laptop started performing poorly. I first noticed when I tried to play a game that I could run without issues before; the performance tanked, hitting an unusable 1 FPS, and my CPU usage soared to about 95% as soon as I launched the game.
I've also noticed that even when I'm just using Firefox or other light apps, the CPU spikes unpredictably from around 5% to over 50%. In the Task Manager, the main culprits for high CPU usage are listed as "System," "SRE," and "Antimalware Service Executable," along with something called "System interrupts."
I've tried a bunch of things to fix this: scanning for malware, updating drivers, installing the latest Windows version, switching to Performance Mode, and even cleaning up corrupt files, but nothing has worked. Any suggestions?
3 Answers
Totally feel your pain! You should confirm how much RAM you have. Sometimes running low on memory can cause performance hiccups, too. You might want to double-check your CPU usage in Task Manager when running different applications to see which ones are hitting the highest spikes.
Hey, just to add on, make sure your BIOS is up to date if you have been using the laptop for a while. Sometimes old firmware can cause performance issues after system updates. Just be careful with any changes in BIOS, back up your data first!
It sounds like a classic case of potential malware or CPU hogging processes. Have you run a scan with AdwCleaner? It could help find any hidden pests that other programs missed. And checking the Task Manager for what’s using your CPU can also give you insights on which applications are contributing to the spikes.
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