Incredibly Slow Computer

[thebjornlegacy]

Several years ago, my family purchased a decently speedy computer, which came with Windows 7. Over the years it has become slower and slower. I installed Windows 10 on it thinking that it would be faster. It wasn't.
Recently I took out the HDD and plugged it into my computer and ran a multi-day defrag on it, in hopes of improving performance. I also used some data cleaning programs. I ran chkdsk /r /f as well, to fix drive errors. I also did a thorough virus scan with Hitman pro.
The drive itself is a 320 GB WD Scorpio Blue drive, made (I think) around 2013. It has a 3 gigabit per second read speed, so it shouldn't be slow. I go to plug it back into the computer and it is the absolute slowest thing I have ever experienced. I'm talking 10 minute startup time.
Ridiculous.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

I would rather not reinstall windows because there are some important files on there that I would rather not lose, and if I back everything up, I'm sure I'll miss something. But if anyone has any file transfer software, I'll be happy to look into it.
Similarly, if anyone has any ideas for how to fix it, I will be happy to try them out.

Thanks a ton!

 

[DSzymborski]

Several years ago, my family purchased a decently speedy computer, which came with Windows 7. Over the years it has become slower and slower. I installed Windows 10 on it thinking that it would be faster. It wasn't.
Recently I took out the HDD and plugged it into my computer and ran a multi-day defrag on it, in hopes of improving performance. I also used some data cleaning programs. I ran chkdsk /r /f as well, to fix drive errors. I also did a thorough virus scan with Hitman pro.
The drive itself is a 320 GB WD Scorpio Blue drive, made (I think) around 2013. It has a 3 gigabit per second read speed, so it shouldn't be slow. I go to plug it back into the computer and it is the absolute slowest thing I have ever experienced. I'm talking 10 minute startup time.
Ridiculous.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

I would rather not reinstall windows because there are some important files on there that I would rather not lose, and if I back everything up, I'm sure I'll miss something. But if anyone has any file transfer software, I'll be happy to look into it.
Similarly, if anyone has any ideas for how to fix it, I will be happy to try them out.

Thanks a ton!

Honestly, a full reinstall is the best thing to do in your situation. If you're worried about losing things, they're already in danger *now* as anything that's not backed has an incredibly precarious experience; any hard drive can go at any time and very frequently, there's no window of opportunity to recover things without paying four figures for the *chance* at a professional recovering the files. Tighten up your backup solution (best is multiple formats and locations, like one backup in a cloud service and one backup on a thumb drive/optical media) and then do a full, clean install.

 

[thebjornlegacy]

Several years ago, my family purchased a decently speedy computer, which came with Windows 7. Over the years it has become slower and slower. I installed Windows 10 on it thinking that it would be faster. It wasn't.
Recently I took out the HDD and plugged it into my computer and ran a multi-day defrag on it, in hopes of improving performance. I also used some data cleaning programs. I ran chkdsk /r /f as well, to fix drive errors. I also did a thorough virus scan with Hitman pro.
The drive itself is a 320 GB WD Scorpio Blue drive, made (I think) around 2013. It has a 3 gigabit per second read speed, so it shouldn't be slow. I go to plug it back into the computer and it is the absolute slowest thing I have ever experienced. I'm talking 10 minute startup time.
Ridiculous.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

I would rather not reinstall windows because there are some important files on there that I would rather not lose, and if I back everything up, I'm sure I'll miss something. But if anyone has any file transfer software, I'll be happy to look into it.
Similarly, if anyone has any ideas for how to fix it, I will be happy to try them out.

Thanks a ton!

Honestly, a full reinstall is the best thing to do in your situation. If you're worried about losing things, they're already in danger *now* as anything that's not backed has an incredibly previous experience; any hard drive can go at any time and very frequently, there's no window of opportunity to recover things without paying four figures for the *chance* at a professional recovering the files. Tighten up your backup solution (best is multiple formats and locations, like one backup in a cloud service and one backup on a thumb drive/optical media) and then do a full, clean install.

Thanks for your answer. I'm gonna go suck it up and backup my entire drive. Are there any folders I don't need to backup? Just to make it a bit easier, I'd like to keep the desktop files and files in the documents folder, for example. Where could I find these in the file tree?

 

[DSzymborski]

Several years ago, my family purchased a decently speedy computer, which came with Windows 7. Over the years it has become slower and slower. I installed Windows 10 on it thinking that it would be faster. It wasn't.
Recently I took out the HDD and plugged it into my computer and ran a multi-day defrag on it, in hopes of improving performance. I also used some data cleaning programs. I ran chkdsk /r /f as well, to fix drive errors. I also did a thorough virus scan with Hitman pro.
The drive itself is a 320 GB WD Scorpio Blue drive, made (I think) around 2013. It has a 3 gigabit per second read speed, so it shouldn't be slow. I go to plug it back into the computer and it is the absolute slowest thing I have ever experienced. I'm talking 10 minute startup time.
Ridiculous.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

I would rather not reinstall windows because there are some important files on there that I would rather not lose, and if I back everything up, I'm sure I'll miss something. But if anyone has any file transfer software, I'll be happy to look into it.
Similarly, if anyone has any ideas for how to fix it, I will be happy to try them out.

Thanks a ton!

Honestly, a full reinstall is the best thing to do in your situation. If you're worried about losing things, they're already in danger *now* as anything that's not backed has an incredibly previous experience; any hard drive can go at any time and very frequently, there's no window of opportunity to recover things without paying four figures for the *chance* at a professional recovering the files. Tighten up your backup solution (best is multiple formats and locations, like one backup in a cloud service and one backup on a thumb drive/optical media) and then do a full, clean install.

Thanks for your answer. I'm gonna go suck it up and backup my entire drive. Are there any folders I don't need to backup? Just to make it a bit easier, I'd like to keep the desktop files and files in the documents folder, for example. Where could I find these in the file tree?

What you need to backup depends on what you have.

The desktop should be at C:\Users\profilename\desktop
The documents should be at C:\Users\profilename\Documents

Can vary if you changed the folder (I do).