Slow laptop, is it because of the slow HD?

[alwayseric]

Hi, i am new here and thanks in advance to whom would like to help me out.

in fact, i am not sure if it is the problem of HD, Ram, or even motherboard...But i do want to try SSD. Anyway, please bear with me for now.

The laptop is Toshiba's first generation i5 (16months old, just out of warranty). 4g, with dedicated video card.

The first time i noticed the lag was when i played Diablo 3 lilke one month ago. D3 can run smoothly on my 5 years old desktop, but quite laggy on my laptop.

then, long story short, i restored the system and only installed the software that i need. however, the lag issue is not solved.

if i play mp3 files, sometime (occasionally) i can notice the sound is distorted for couple of seconds when i open another file (say, MS Word) or even just open a new page in Chrome to type in a website. this is extremely abnormal. i admit i5 is a bit old, but defnitelly more than enough to handle playing mp3 and internet surfing.

Someone said it might be a sign that the motherboard was dying....geeee, i hope it is not true...

could anyone kindly advise me where i should check it out? is it really because of the 5400rpm HD. ( i remember Wither 2 was very very choppy on this laptop, but far more smooth on the desktop, too)

 

[Hazle]

disk check your HDD for errors. sounds like it's slowly dying. if that's not the case, try to run memtest and see if your ram's still ok.

if your only problem now is the sound, then try updating the driver, if you haven't. if it still persists; then best case scenario your audio is dying and that would require a new motherboard i guess. if you still feel the PC's still lags at more simpler tasks, then, it may be the motherboard

 

[alwayseric]

thanks a lot for the suggestions.

i tried memtest, the ram is good. the problem is not the sound. the occasional distorted sound is just a symptom of some unknown problems that happen to my laptop.