Windows 7 slow boot on laptop | works fine on desktop

So my laptop started to have a slow boot about 2 years ago. It took about 15 minutes to boot up. Same thing when I wake from hibernation.

I have done the basics to fixing slow boots and managed to get it to boot in about 8 minutes. It has been like this for 2 years now.

Recently I changed out the HDD thinking it was the cause. In the process I hooked my original HDD to my desktop and everything was lightning fast.

This is now leading me to think that is has to be hardware causing the slowness since on my desktop it boots fine.

So I am here for suggestions! Here are some things to note:

I have 3 bad usb ports that do not work.
The disk drive does not open. I have to tell it to open from the software end.
I have cleaned the dust out to the best of my ability.
The laptop is 6 years old and has been dropped a many times and is held together with tape at some parts.
It is a Dell Inspiron N5010, 15.6"
My new HDD is 1 TB and I have about 600 GB free space on it.

My current workaround is to just put the laptop to sleep. So as long as I keep it plugged in, it works fine. But if I have to unplug it . . . well it runs out of battery.

If you can put the laptop to sleep, then wake it up fast, I think that is your best bet.

I think your laptop is on its last leg -- it has been dropped many times, which is evidently why the USB ports don't work. You probably need a new motherboard and who knows what else.

Since the laptop is six years old, it isn't worth spending much money repairing it. When you can no longer nurse it along, buy another laptop. Either that, or buy an identical laptop on Ebay for the parts, and make one good laptop out of the two.

I was expecting as much. Figured I would ask just to see if there were any ideas.

AtomicBoom117 said:

My current workaround is to just put the laptop to sleep. So as long as I keep it plugged in, it works fine. But if I have to unplug it . . . well it runs out of battery.

You could try putting it in hibernation rather than sleep. In this way, the system state would be written to the hard drive, rather than saved only in memory; you could therefore unplug it without losing everything you were working on.