Computer EXTREMELY SLOW, Constant Hard Disk activity, how can I speed it up?

[Mr Burns]

So I got a new PC four months ago, and when I first got it it ran beautfully. Then I installed a few programs and it slowed down a little. No big deal.

But lately my PC has become REALLY slow. It's become BARELY usable now. It's not down to CPU Usage - I have a quad core i5 and the usage is always around 10% or less. I have 4 gigs of RAM and usage is between 2-3 gigs most of the time. Sure, it gets full if I open loads of tabs but the thing is my computer is really slow even with just one or two tabs open.

As I spend most of my time on my pc browsing the internet, that is what is affected most by the constant sluggishness and unresponsiveness of my pc. It doesn't matter which browser I use - Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, it's still just as slow.

I believe the culpriut is my hard drive. The hard disk activity light is nearly always lit solid and I always hear it chrunching away, sometimes it gets really loud. The harder my hard drive is working, the slower my computer is.

And sometimes I walk away with no programs open and come back 20 minutes later.. And it's still chrunching away.

It's painfully slow, just to do anything. Even opening my docs can seem to take an eternity. But it's worst when internet browsing. Resource heavy sites like youtube and msn take forever. You have to wait ages before you can click on a link or even scroll down. And then it stops responding altogether and I get the spinning wheel (you all know what I'm talking about) and then the browser stops working and restarts. Then I have to load up everything again.

I just don't know what to do. I've tried disabling programs I don't want to load at startup but it hasn't seemed to help much.

Wondering what else can I do??

BTW, I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

 

[theyeti87]

Sounds like a dying hard drive, given the symptoms and that you can hear it grinding and whirring away during normal operations.

Are you using a laptop or desktop?

 

[unksol]

You need to provide system specs. Every time

 

[jitpublisher]

I second the dying hard drive. I just did this myself a few months back with my secondary storage drive when I noticed it was taking hours to transfer mp3's to my phone one morning. A few file copies back and forth to my OS drive confirmed it, it would take like 5 minutes just to copy a single mp3 file from it. I bought a new drive, and it took the cloning process nearly 10 nail biting hours, but it was finally completed successfully. Removed the old drive, booted with the new one installed, presto! Just like new again. Point is, it does sound like a dying hard drive. The more you mess with it, the closer it is to permanent death, and no chance of recovery or cloning to a new one. Take care of this right away.

 

[kittle]

Could be a dying HDD, it could also be out of RAM. 4GB isnt much nowdays. Have you checked the memory usage in task manager while your browser is hung? Once you get past using 3 to 3.5GB of your 4GB, performance will tank.

Another symptom of a dying HDD is a persistent clicking sound when you try to load a document or open a program

 

[capt_taco]

Dying hard drive is a definite possibility; could also be some stuck program or Windows process that is just spinning away.

Easy enough to check for: Task Manager -> Performance -> Resource Monitor, and see if any process in particular is thrashing the hard drive. If so, kill it and see if the problem clears up.

Even if so, it's worth doing a hard drive diagnostic, as I've had several hard drives behave this way not long before giving out.

 

[Mr Burns]

Sounds like a dying hard drive, given the symptoms and that you can hear it grinding and whirring away during normal operations.

Are you using a laptop or desktop?

I'm using a desktop, it's custom built, the hard drive is a Seagate. I doubt my hard drive is dying. Everything was bought brand new off a website. My hard drive is split up into two partitions. One contains the Windows folders and a few other bits of stuff, the other partition contains everything else. Partition C: has 82GB free out of 390GB and Partition D: has 340GB free out of 540GB.

 

[Mr Burns]

You need to provide system specs. Every time

Well.. I did sort of tell you in my post.

But if you want them in full...

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Processor: Intel Core i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50 GHZ 3.50 GHZ

RAM: 4GB

Graphics: Nvidia 750 GTX

 

[Mr Burns]

Dying hard drive is a definite possibility; could also be some stuck program or Windows process that is just spinning away.

Easy enough to check for: Task Manager -> Performance -> Resource Monitor, and see if any process in particular is thrashing the hard drive. If so, kill it and see if the problem clears up.

Even if so, it's worth doing a hard drive diagnostic, as I've had several hard drives behave this way not long before giving out.

I keep checking that and the most common processes to use the hard drive are:

mbamservice.exe (Malwarebytes Real-Time Protection)
avguard.exe (Avira)
SearchIndexer.exe
System

 

[Mr Burns]

It's worrying that you all say it's due to my hard drive dying

But this problem happened with my old PC as well and I had that one for years. It was the motherboard that actually died in the end, making the whole PC unable to even start up.

 

[jitpublisher]

It's worrying that you all say it's due to my hard drive dying

But this problem happened with my old PC as well and I had that one for years. It was the motherboard that actually died in the end, making the whole PC unable to even start up.

Just because the drive is new, does not mean it cannot fail. It may not be the drive, but the problem you are having makes it a major suspect.

 

[Mr Burns]

UPDATE: My computer performance is even worse!

The problem seemed to get a bit better on it's own. But now it's much worse.

I've just tried to get 2 games running, I double clicked one and nothing happened. One game got as far as the black loading screen with the spinning circle, but the game just hanged there. Internet explorer and firefox won't load at all. Eventually got safari to load but it wouldn't even get to the homescreen. Google Chrome works fine however (so far!) so using that for the time being. When I first powered on the computer today I could not click on anything on the start menu but thankfully, I can now.

Ironically the hard drive usage has died down, I can no longer hear the hard drive anymore and it is just flickering occasionally. Games are not loading but programs and folders are working fine. Internet Browsing has become responsive again. CPU Usage is very low - less than 10%.

Interestingly when I tried to start the games/programs that wouldn't load, there was no disk activity or CPU Usage at all. Very odd. It's like my computer is deliberately refusing to load certain items...

Tried another game and it did load succesfully, however, I then discovered that theres no sound! Yet all the speaker and audio cables are plugged in and sound is enabled into the control panel. I then tried messing around in the control panel before my computer froze and I had to close it down. But again, there was no cpu or disk activity.

I just don't know what to do anymore... My computer has become utterly useless....

It was great when I first got it in June. Not anymore.

 

[Mr Burns]

Thanks for all your help guys.

Turned my computer on Friday Night, and the computer is pretty much back to normal. It's like it never happened. It's remedied itself as quickly as it went haywire. Hard drive though is still thrashing with the hard disk activity light often fully lit of flickering, but it doesn't seem to be as loud as before. Performance is ok(ish). It could be faster and more responsive at least stuff works.

Tried disabling everything from msconfig and restarted my pc. It didn't work, I was still having issues, but shut it down and started it up again, and everything is working again. Sound, programs and games are working as normal.

Not sure what solved the problem or what causedthe problem in the first place. I still hate my PC, but at least everything's back to normal (for now).

It's like it magically fixed itself overnight!

 

[BadActor]

If you have disabled your pagefil and are marginal on the amount of RAM you have, it can cause very similar problems.

 

[jitpublisher]

Check your SATA cables too, I have seen cables go bad, believe it or not, and cables that would not keep a good connection at the plugs. I have spent days of trying figure out a similar problem, to be fixed by simply using a new SATA cable. Rule of thumb, rule nothing out, and start trouble shooting with the simplest things and work your way up. Hope you got it solved, what ever it was.

 

[Mr Burns]

If you have disabled your pagefil and are marginal on the amount of RAM you have, it can cause very similar problems.

My hard drive I split up into two partitions. C: Partition is used for Windows, Programs, Documents etc. Almost everything on the PC is stored here. 100GB free out of 390GB. My other partition (D is used as extra storage, and that has 332GB free out of 540GB.

My page file is set to use the D: Partition only, and initial size is set to 4GB and maximum size is set to 6GB.