Surface RT is super slow

Question

My Surface RT is now running so slow that it can hardly do anything.  I have restarted and have also attempted to run an update but the update fails.  Any help is greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi,

There are some factors that affect why your device is running slow. Programs or applications that are running in the background or you might need to free up drive space to helps it run better. To clean up files we suggest that you use Disk Clean up.

1. Open Disk Cleanup by clicking the Start button. In the search box, type Disk Cleanup, and then, in the list of results, select Disk Cleanup.
2. If prompted, select the drive that you want to clean up, and then select OK.
3. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box in the Description section, select Clean up system files.
4. If prompted, select the drive that you want to clean up, and then select OK.
5. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, on the Disk Cleanup tab, select the check boxes for the file types that you want to delete, and then select OK. To remove data from a previous installation of Windows, select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box.
6. In the message that appears, select Delete files.
7. Go back to the Computer in File Explorer, select the drive you cleaned up, and then select Refresh. If you need to free more space (the drive is still marked red), go to the next tip.

Let us know how it goes.

Answer 2

You can try to gain drive space to help speed up things. This may not help with updates.

You can save the files you want to keep that are on the phone to a USB drive and restore the RT to an out of the box condition from within windows. This will require installing all available updates again.