My Envy 17 is running horribly...

I just got the Amazon version Envy 17, with the i7 720, 8 GB RAM, and Radeon 5850.

I did a clean install and swapped the primary HDD with that of an Intel G2 80GB SSD.

You would think with those components, the machine would be lightning.

Well I'm telling you, this thing is more sluggish right now than my m11x with su7000 ULV and Samsung SSD.

It's absolutely maddening. My boot time is > 30 seconds, opening Google Chrome takes about > 5 seconds. Browsing the internet is laggy. Programs lock up randomly for a second or so.

I feel like I'm using a 5 year old machine. Obviously, there's a problem somewhere and I can't identify it. I have a very good understanding of computer components and hardware.

Changing the power profiles from balanced to high performance does nothing to help.

Honestly, the computer ran fine for a few weeks then gradually (without me doing or changing anything) the performance has gone down, down, down.

Any ideas guys? I know this is an awesome computer, I just don't understand why it's been so laggy. I'm a perfectionist with computers; I keep the drives optimized and never load my PC up with junk. Chrome, Word, AVG, CCleaner , CPUZ, GPUZ, + about 5 games is the only thing on it.

 

Do some benchmarks to find what component is not meeting the expected performance level, then you can try to find the "why" once you have the "what". Culprit can be defective ram, cpu, hdd, mainboard, or just bad drivers or bios problem. Since you replaced the hdd, that is the most likely suspect, you could have damaged it or another component with esd during the upgrade. Parts damaged with esd tend to fail gradually rather than a 100% fail instantly.

 

...crap.

 

Seems to me like it's a HD problem, though as e14 says, it could be an IO problem.

Boot off a linux live cd, and if it's still got hte problem with no HD usage, then you know it's not an HD thing.

 

Was this problem of sluggishness visible from the get go with your SSD installation? My strong suspicion is that you have an SSD issue, but that seems puzzling in that you are using the same brand of SSD that HP puts in the machine, right? easy test would be to put back in regular hard drive or clone your current operating system partition to a conventional hard drive, and replace it in the primary hard drive bay. If that clears up your sluggish machine, (although obviously wouldn't be as fast as with a well operating solid-state drive, suspect you would have a SSD firmware incompatibility with your laptop's bios. I'm curious because I'm about to get an and the 17 where I'm going to do the same thing, so this is a little bit disconcerting, although my SSD is crucial and I just updated the bios so crossing my fingers that I don't run into the same issue. I think the Intel drive originally was the X.25 that they were putting in this machine, and it's not clear why a different Intel drive would interact badly with your laptop.