- Dec 26, 2008
- 3
- 0
- 18,510
My PC has been suffering a variety of problems for several weeks now:
* Sporadic blue screens, giving a variety of different stop codes. Sometimes it goes a week or two with no BSODs, other times it BSODs several times per day, often several in a row, BSOD'ing repeatedly after logging in.
* Strangely slow at times, getting stuck at specific points of mundane tasks. E.g.:
- I try a malware scan using Trend Micro HouseCall. It sticks at 3% progress ("Listing autorun entries"). PC is not frozen, the 'hourglass' continues to animate, but the elapsed time just keeps counting forever.
- Uninstalling certain applications is excruciatingly slow. Removing Adobe Photoshop Elements took maybe 20 minutes, with it taking 5+ minutes just to remove its temporary files (from the C drive which is an SSD).
- Some installers can get stuck at a certain point. One reached about "80% progress" (yes I know progress bars are often meaningless) before sticking for several minutes at the point where it was trying to create the .lnk files in the Start menu.
- When I fire up Task Manager, "System interrupts" is at 100% CPU usage for a few seconds. Other times when the PC is 'chugging' (e.g. taking an awful long time over closing an application), the process "System" is at 90%+ usage.
Maybe these symptoms will seem familiar to someone out there, or trigger an 'aha' moment...?
I've tried lots of the obvious things:
Other routes I'm presently going down:
I have examined some of the BSOD 'minidump' files - can paste some excerpts if that's helpful. I did search your forum, and I understand that varied stop codes can indicate hardware problems, which is why I went down the route of disabling drivers.
The PC doesn't seem to BSOD in Safe Mode, so you'd think I should be able to get to the bottom of this by disabling/updating potentially misbehaving drivers. But it crossed my mind that Windows's extreme slowness (as described above) could be a big clue to someone on here?
My PC is a few years old now and I know it isn't the most up-to-date model, but it didn't used to be so sluggish, and the way it gets stuck at such specific points is more than a little fishy. There's clearly something 'up'; I just wonder if the BSODs are related to the performance degradation?
PC spec:
Asus P8Z77-V-LX motherboard
Intel Core i5-3570K (3.4GHz)
8 GB RAM
GFX: ATI 7700 series
SSD: Samsung 840
HDD: ST1000DM003-9YN1
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
* Sporadic blue screens, giving a variety of different stop codes. Sometimes it goes a week or two with no BSODs, other times it BSODs several times per day, often several in a row, BSOD'ing repeatedly after logging in.
* Strangely slow at times, getting stuck at specific points of mundane tasks. E.g.:
- I try a malware scan using Trend Micro HouseCall. It sticks at 3% progress ("Listing autorun entries"). PC is not frozen, the 'hourglass' continues to animate, but the elapsed time just keeps counting forever.
- Uninstalling certain applications is excruciatingly slow. Removing Adobe Photoshop Elements took maybe 20 minutes, with it taking 5+ minutes just to remove its temporary files (from the C drive which is an SSD).
- Some installers can get stuck at a certain point. One reached about "80% progress" (yes I know progress bars are often meaningless) before sticking for several minutes at the point where it was trying to create the .lnk files in the Start menu.
- When I fire up Task Manager, "System interrupts" is at 100% CPU usage for a few seconds. Other times when the PC is 'chugging' (e.g. taking an awful long time over closing an application), the process "System" is at 90%+ usage.
Maybe these symptoms will seem familiar to someone out there, or trigger an 'aha' moment...?
I've tried lots of the obvious things:
- Updating everything, latest motherboard drivers, updated firmware, etc.
- Disabling non-essential devices (SB Audigy card in favour of motherboard's built-in audio, etc).
- Removing old/unneeded drivers.
- Drive scans.
- A different malware program, Malwarebytes, DID complete successfully. It quarantined one questionable program, a supposed "driver updater".
Other routes I'm presently going down:
- Reverting to basic Windows drivers for the AMD graphics.
- Possibly try a different graphics card
- If all else fails, planning to try cloning the SSD and try booting from that.
I have examined some of the BSOD 'minidump' files - can paste some excerpts if that's helpful. I did search your forum, and I understand that varied stop codes can indicate hardware problems, which is why I went down the route of disabling drivers.
The PC doesn't seem to BSOD in Safe Mode, so you'd think I should be able to get to the bottom of this by disabling/updating potentially misbehaving drivers. But it crossed my mind that Windows's extreme slowness (as described above) could be a big clue to someone on here?
My PC is a few years old now and I know it isn't the most up-to-date model, but it didn't used to be so sluggish, and the way it gets stuck at such specific points is more than a little fishy. There's clearly something 'up'; I just wonder if the BSODs are related to the performance degradation?
PC spec:
Asus P8Z77-V-LX motherboard
Intel Core i5-3570K (3.4GHz)
8 GB RAM
GFX: ATI 7700 series
SSD: Samsung 840
HDD: ST1000DM003-9YN1
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
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