My Dell G15 suddenly shut down while I was playing FC 26 and would not boot. A technician kept it for two days and said he repaired an I/O-related problem on the motherboard. I had removed my SSD before taking it in, so I reinstalled it afterward. The laptop then showed a "Checking Media" failure because Windows Boot Manager was missing from the BIOS boot list. I managed to start Windows by manually selecting bootmgrx64 from the boot options, but the system is now almost unusably slow. Before the failure, it ran games smoothly. The Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3060, and 16 GB of DDR4 memory all appear correctly in Task Manager, and I do not think any components were replaced. What should I check to find the cause?
2 Answers
Since the machine had a motherboard-related repair and the boot entry disappeared, I would also verify the SSD connection and run a drive-health check. Back up important files first, then inspect the SSD's SMART status and reinstall the proper Dell chipset, graphics, storage, and power-management drivers. If the disk health is good and the drivers do not help, test with a clean Windows installation or have the technician recheck the motherboard repair, because the hardware may not be operating correctly even though the CPU, GPU, and RAM are detected.
Start by checking Task Manager's Processes and Performance tabs while the laptop is slow. CPU, GPU, memory, and especially disk usage can reveal the bottleneck. If the drive is stuck near 100%, the SSD or its connection may be having problems, or Windows may be busy repairing or updating itself. Also check whether the laptop is running on the correct power mode and whether the charger is detected, since some gaming laptops become extremely slow on battery or with an unsupported adapter.
While Windows Update is downloading, CPU usage moves between about 20% and 35%, memory is around 45%, and the other usage readings are mostly between 0% and 2%.