Framework 13 (11th gen) suddenly running very slow - trying to see if hardware or software related

Community Support
,
1

Framework 1st batch laptop with an i7-1165G7 currently running Windows 11 23H2

I updated from Win10 to Win11 just a few weeks ago and then to Win11 24H2 right before Christmas, at first everything seemed fine, but then one morning waking from sleep, the computer was running very slow and rebooting did not fix. And, when I say slow, I mean almost not usable. It takes 5 seconds to bring up the start menu. File transfers are like molasses, web browsing reminds me of being on dialup. Writing anything in either the browser or even notepad is slow enough that you watch each letter appear.

I’ve done a bunch of things since then, including rolling back to 23H2 and then repairing 23H2 (which took a full 2 days to complete). I’ve tested the SSD and RAM (both came out OK), CPU usage and memory is reported as low and fans are not running. Coretemp shows low temps on all cores. Malware scans came back clean.

I’m now wondering if it could be a mainboard issue? Last Thanksgiving I had an issue where power came on accidentally when I had the laptop open and was working on the Type cover. The mainboard smoked and I had a lot of problems with the computer shutting down on me and not booting cleanly for a few days. And then those problems just went away. But, I’m wondering if that could be causing this slowness?

Next steps for testing I think would be 1) try a bootable Linux distro from a thumb drive and see if it also runs slow? If it is fast, then nuke Windows and do a clean install. If Linux also runs really slow, then I should look at hardware? I’m guessing the mainboard being the #1 suspect?

What else am I missing?

2

And, as suddenly as it started, the laptop is back to functioning normally. I didn’t even reboot, it was running slow, I started downloading a Linux Mint Iso and was partitioning a flash drive and the next thing I know the computer was responding normally to commands. This is after 5 days of it being slow through reboots, rolling back OS upgrades, everything. Would really love to get an idea of what might have been going on so that I can get ahead of it if there’s a part that is failing.