64 bit vista running really slow

[tl266]

Hi all, wasn't entirely sure where to put this but the vista section seemed like a good place to start.

Basically my system has been running really slow for the past couple of days. This started when I came out of sleep mode and has persisted since then. When I try and log on the system will do one of two things. Firstly it may hang at the 'welcome' screen for ages before displaying a black screen instead of my background and not progressing any further past this. Alternatively it will load up fine but any attempt to do anything will be painfully slow, for example the start menu will take about a minute to load after clicking the home button, firefox will take about 30 minutes to load ctrl alt del will take about 5 minutes to bring up any options and task manager takes so long to load that I haven't had the patience to wait for it. If I try and shut down/restart the computer from this state it will take about 10 minutes to get past the 'logging of' menu and another 20/30 to finally shut down. (as opposed to the 10 seconds or so before this started).

I have been able to run normally a couple of times but this just seems to be pure luck. I have tried defragmenting, turning things off in sysconfig and safe mode runs just fine.

Also if it is relevant, I have been having a few page-fault in non paged area bluescreens over the past month.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

It's either failing memory or hard drive.

 

[nukemaster]

Well, I think you will have to run some diagnostics for sure.

First get CrystalDiskInfo and check to make sure your hard drive has not started to report smart errors. You can grab the portable one so you do not need to install it.

Next off you should run a memory test. Grab MemTest86+ for this. the ISO image can be burned to a DVD with the built in Windows burning software or most other software for writing discs. Just remember you are not burning the file, you are burning the image the file contains(again, newer versions of windows will take care of this for you).

One more thing to check would be system temperatures, HWmon is good for this.

 

[TenPc]

Just shut it down and leave it for five miuntes.
Now power on and go to safe mode.
Allow to settle at desktop then shut down, not restart.
Leave off for a minute then power on to desktop.

Directions for Shutdown -
Start > Shutdown

Edit now go and find how much free space is available on the C: drive, and the total volume of the hdd.