Computer running slowly

Blisterman

I have a windows 7 laptop and for pretty much the whole past year, it has been painfully slow in responding.
I've tried disabling background tasks, file indexing, defragging, cleaning the registry, turning off Aero, and updating everything, with little improvements.

I'm on the verge of reformatting the whole thing and starting from scratch, but the list of things I'd have to reinstall and sort out is huge! and I'd like to save myself the bother if possible.

Is it possible that the reason my computer is running so slowly is a physical problem with the RAM or Graphics card or anything? And if so, how would I check to see if that is the case?

Mance Rayder

When you open task manager (ctrl, alt and del), in the processes tab, do you see anything that appears to be eating RAM? Can you do a print screen of the task manager window and post it here?

Can you post your stats? Ram+CPU.

Maybe we can figure it out before you go wiping it.

cgarrad

It takes an hour for a clean install of W7 and http://ninite.com/

Dont waste your time trouble shooting ;-)

Also gets rid of all the bloat the machine came with.

Jaafa

Also defragging doesn't do anything for windows 7 PC's

kilianmanning

You don't have any spyware or anything? The best thing to do would probably be to reinstall windows alright.:) do you use any ram eating programs? How much ram do you have?

Blisterman

Ok, have completely reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows, but it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. On a completely fresh copy of windows with no other programs installed, it takes over two minutes to boot up, and everything is slow to respond after that.

Windows task manager shows 11% of the RAM being used, so I don't think that's a problem.

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

Ok, have completely reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows, but it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. On a completely fresh copy of windows with no other programs installed, it takes over two minutes to boot up, and everything is slow to respond after that.

Windows task manager shows 11% of the RAM being used, so I don't think that's a problem.

is the fan clean?

Blisterman

I thought that might have been it, so I opened the case and gave it a blow of canned air, and it was pretty dust free.

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

I thought that might have been it, so I opened the case and gave it a blow of canned air, and it was pretty dust free.

You may have a failing hard drive.. Thats the only other thing i would think of. Is it making any funny noises?

Blisterman

No not really. Is there a way of checking the hard drive for problems?

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

No not really. Is there a way of checking the hard drive for problems?

Yes, if you right click you're drive in my computer. Then properties-tools-error-checking.
It will take a while.

yoyo

Yeah classic signs of a failing hard drive, you can run diagnostics off the Ultimate Boot CD. Just download the .iso, burn to a blank cd-r, boot off it and go to HDD>Diagnostics>Seatools for DOS is a good one (Works with any hard disk). Run an advanced long scan, the short ones can sometimes miss the dodgy sectors on the drive

Nick

kilianmanning

yoyo wrote: »

Yeah classic signs of a failing hard drive, you can run diagnostics off the Ultimate Boot CD. Just download the .iso, burn to a blank cd-r, boot off it and go to HDD>Diagnostics>Seatools for DOS is a good one (Works with any hard disk). Run an advanced long scan, the short ones can sometimes miss the dodgy sectors on the drive

Nick

never copped that before! Looks useful:p

cgarrad

Good time to upgrade to a ssd.

Blisterman

Funny enough I was actually thinking of that just there. I'd like to be fairly sure though that it's the hard disk causing the trouble before I spend that money.

Bosh

Other possibility is that it may be running hot?

If you're happy enough disassembling, strip down remove heatsink on processor, clean both heatsink & processor top with cotton buds dampened (only dampened mind you - it is liquid after all!!) with isopropyl alcohol. Re-apply fresh thermal paste & re-assemble.

If not that then looks like HDD going south as previously stated.

Blisterman

It runs just as slow when I first turn it on. Have tested the hard drive, and there seems to be no problems. Could it be the graphics card?

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

It runs just as slow when I first turn it on. Have tested the hard drive, and there seems to be no problems. Could it be the graphics card?

nope, run memtest it could be your ram

Blisterman

Gave memtest a go, and there appears to be no errors. About to try running Prime95 overnight to see if it's a problem with the CPU.

I'd like to thank everyone for their help so far. I'm gonna keep trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

Gave memtest a go, and there appears to be no errors. About to try running Prime95 overnight to see if it's a problem with the CPU.

I'd like to thank everyone for their help so far. I'm gonna keep trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

doubt it would be a cpu problem tbh, give it a go anyway. This really has me stumped:p

Blisterman

I decided to give installing an SSD a go, and it's sorted!

Everything's running beautifully. Startup time has reduced from 3 minutes to 30 seconds, and there's no longer any lagging with anything.

So thanks for your help everyone. I appreciate it.

kilianmanning

Blisterman wrote: »

I decided to give installing an SSD a go, and it's sorted!

Everything's running beautifully. Startup time has reduced from 3 minutes to 30 seconds, and there's no longer any lagging with anything.

So thanks for your help everyone. I appreciate it.

Hard drive must have been on the way out so.