Windows 10 laptop lagging

My laptop is 4 years old, and it is not excruciatingly slow, but i find myself waiting often for tasks that I'm thinking it should be doing quicker. I will see little things like programs go into the not responding state (even Copernic desktop search, that usually is a stable program), when I right-click I occasionally will see the hourglass for several seconds before I see the context menu appear--things like that.

I'm wondering what the best options are here for me.

1. I have 8 gigs RAM, upgradeable to 16. I talked about a possible upgrade here, and if I understand the advice offered there correctly, it was that as long as I have free RAM (and I check often when my laptop is lagging, and I often have at least a gig), a RAM upgrade isn't going to help the issue much.

2. Reinstallation of Windows 10? I do keep my serial numbers of my installed programs handy, so although this would be time consuming, it could be done.

3. I've heard (years ago) that most of the gain from a reinstall because of a slow PC, could be had, merely by deleting the user account and then creating a new one. Would this make sense for me here? If doing this would make me still need to reinstall programs, then I don't think it would save much time over a reinstall.

4. Anything else that is a bit quicker for me than an OS reinstall?

FWIW, I do keep W10 updated (version 1903), as well as Windows Defender. Every time it scans it gives me a clean bill of health, so I don't think this is malware. The laptop came as Windows 7 or 8, but I still have the flash drive with the Windows 10 upgrade, so I suppose that is how I would reinstall Windows 10.

In the past, I've bought new laptops at the 4 year mark, but this one is not overheating or giving me any signs of a hardware problem that would keep me from using it another 2-4 more years, so I definitely would want to work with the OS/hard drive that I have, rather than just buy something new. My SSD is nowhere near full so I couldn't justify buying a new one, financially speaking.

 

OK now your second paragraph--was that instructions for simply upgrading to 1909, or in the event of doing a reinstallation?Dumb question I know, but I just wanted to make sure I understand what you are telling me to do.

 

Evan, I'll give that a lookover. I only saw your guide to repair install.

I'll use the flash drive to update to 1909, then look over your guide & report back.

 

OK I have the Windows 10 installation files copied onto a flash drive. But it tells me when i boot into it, that it won't let me upgrade a computer that has Windows 10 already on it. I think the last window is the option to keep all my files. I selected that option. Should I select the other one?

Also, I have all my personal files on another partition. I was concerned that by having Windows reinstall, it would blow away my entire hard drive on my laptop, although I was forced to exit before it showed me partitions on the drive.

One other option that I saw, that I did NOT select, was to Repair Windows (that was a button on the bottom left of a window that popped up). Should I have selected that one?

But this is a better way to upgrade, then just going through the Update options in Windows Settings?

 

OK christer, I'm giving it a second shot, and when the download is done I'll post back with further questions.

 

So far so good. Only had to update AMD graphics driver, everything else looks exact same.

I'll keep everyone posted as far as if I still notice lagging, although I'll hit Evan's optimization tweaks thread regardless, b/c it would probably benefit me anyways.