Windows 8.1 causing massive slowdowns on my laptop Dell XP13

[NinjaPenguin777]

I upgraded my Dell Xps 13 (L321x) to Windows 8.1 a few weeks back. I have been having massive slow down issues that I wasn't having prior to 8.1. My browser will become sluggish and overall the performance just hangs up. This doesn't happen all the time mind you. This happens every 5-7 days. During this time the start menu button will disappear, the side menu's will no longer pop up and prompts will no longer show up on my screen such as the sleep/restart/turn off screen. Once I turn my laptop off and then back on it's fine again, but this is really annoying me. Windows 8.1 has been nothing short of a disaster for me. My laptop isn't lacking in power (Core i7 2637M @1.7GHz, 4GB ram, 250 GB SSD). Has anyone else encountered this or have a solution for me? My drivers are all up to date as well. Oh and that reminds me. My webcam driver craps out on me all the time. I can get one Skype call out of it, but the next time I boot up skype it doesn't work and I have to uninstall the driver.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Which browser are you using? Did the browser problems start after you upgraded to 8.1?

 

[NinjaPenguin777]

Chrome. Yes they started after 8.1. The whole computer slows down though. Its not just the browser. I decided to just re-install Windows 8 and 8.1

 

[Laura Knotek]

Chrome. Yes they started after 8.1. The whole computer slows down though. Its not just the browser. I decided to just re-install Windows 8 and 8.1

Have you tried other browsers?

Please let us know if you continue having problems. I have 8.1 installed on a 5+ year old laptop, and it runs faster than Vista that was originally on the laptop when I got it and faster than 7 or 8, which I had prior to 8.1.

 

[zacman]

Does it have a NVIDIA gpu? The 8.1 drivers have a known problem with web browsers.

 

[NinjaPenguin777]

It wasn't just the browser though. That's the thing. The browser is just the main thing I was using that would start the slowdown, but then the other stuff happened as well. The start button thing would vanish. My side menus wouldn't show up. I couldn't shut the computer down other than brute force using the power button (going to the menu and alt+f4 on the desktop both wouldn't work). Firefox was the same way. It seems that once it hit the whole computer was toast. I'm assuming it was a bad cpu driver or some other kind of driver mishap. If it happens again I'm just going to reinstall Windows 8 without 8.1

I don't have an Nvidia gpu in this laptop. Just the normal Intel HD 3000. The complete reinstall of Windows 8 and 8.1 seems to have done the trick but I guess I'll find out in a few days.