pc running slow: ram or cpu?

[Tellah]

hi everyone

i found my pc really slow in these days. I've been away for two months and when i came back i've found my computer running slower than usual (i left the pc completely unplugged and well repaired from dust).
It's a sort of lag doing normal use of the computer (opening/using chrome, opening programs,browsing/opening files and folders...). The strange thing is that it doesn't slow when i'm playing games; in that situation the game is fine.
I'm thinking about doing a memtest to see if this slowliness has anything to do with the ram but....is there a similar test to see if the cpu or the motherboard has some sort of problem?

i was about to buy some upgrade to my pc but before doing so i just want to make sure this problem is just maybe solvable with a format

thank you all!

 

[aldan]

what are your specs?slowdowns can be hardware relate ie ram,cpu,etc or they can be caused by a lack of housekeeping ie defrags,disk cleanups,etc.or they can be virus/malware related.so i am correct in assuming that your computer ran fine before you went away?

 

[Tellah]

what are your specs?slowdowns can be hardware relate ie ram,cpu,etc or they can be caused by a lack of housekeeping ie defrags,disk cleanups,etc.or they can be virus/malware related.so i am correct in assuming that your computer ran fine before you went away?

my pc spec are on my avatar. anyway cpu is i5 750 (2,6g), Asus p7p55d pro, western digital 500 g, ram corsair dominator 2x2G, radeon hd 3870, antec hcg 620M

yes my pc was an ok pc before leavin (wasn't amazingly fast, but could do pretty much everything i needed). And no, now when i'm playing games i have no problems. My problems are just under windows, and doing pretty day to day use.

 

[aldan]

cant see any specs under your avatar.looks like maybe just some houskeeping.do a disk cleanup.click start menu>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup.let it run.use your defragger to defragment the disk.i would also download ccleaner and do a registry clean.make sure when it prompts you to do a backup of your registry.if you dont notice any change lets do a scan with your antivirus and malwarebytes and post both logs in your next post.

 

[Tellah]

cant see any specs under your avatar.looks like maybe just some houskeeping.do a disk cleanup.click start menu>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup.let it run.use your defragger to defragment the disk.i would also download ccleaner and do a registry clean.make sure when it prompts you to do a backup of your registry.if you dont notice any change lets do a scan with your antivirus and malwarebytes and post both logs in your next post.

tonight i'm gonna run a complete memtest (like all night) and tomorrow i'll do the cleaning. anyway is there a test (like memtest for the ram) for the cpu to check in what condition is it (if it's faulty or have some prob)?

 

[Tellah]

ok since now i've ran memetest for 10 hours and the ram is ok. I ran also 3 type of diagnostic for the HDD to check if maybe the problem was related to it and my HDD has succesfully passed all 3 test as well. I was thinking about running prime 95 to check the status of my CPU, but i'm a little worried about that: can i run safely that program with a stock cpu's cooler or there are chances that my cpu will burn with that kind of test? I want to run that so i could clearly says that the slowliness of my pc is referred to maybe some update went wrong or maybe faulty registry (in that case i would perform a clean format)

edit: i've also ran the antivirus/spybot scan and there are no infection.

 

[aldan]

you should be ok running prime 95 with the stock cooler.you probably have a shutdown temp that can be set in the bios as well.id babysit it for 20min or so and if everything is good ignore it.