Question System Slows Until Hard Shutdown?

[rrreed]

One of my computers will progressively get slower over just a few days of running. It's a relatively new computer that I purchased about 2 years ago from Dell. It has 16GB of RAM and when I open task manager, the RAM seems good but the Disk is the thing that is running hard even when I only have Outlook and/or Firefox running.

The strange thing is that if I run a normal restart or shutdown then it can be really slow to shutdown and start back up. And after performing a normal restart, the Disk will still be working hard and the PC will be slow. But if I do a hard shutdown by holding the power button, the restart will be quick and the computer will run great for another few days again. And ideas what would cause something like this?

I've ran the "sfc /scannow", "chkdsk" and "dism" scans. I've also replaced the old hard drive with a new SSD and upgraded from Windows10 to Windows11 but the problem just keeps following me. Any ideas are appreciated!

 

[Order 66]

What are the full system specs including age and model of PSU? Are you running the OS off of an SSD.

 

[hedwar2011]

With you doing the hard drive replacement to a SSD and also upgrading from 10 to 11, there are a couple of possibilities.
1) When you upgraded from 10 to 11, did you do an in-place upgrade or did you completely format and install clean?
2) Your description of it getting slower over time and the "disk" running hard makes me think something installed is likely slowing it down. Have you tried doing a clean boot via msconfig and see if the issue continues after doing so?

 

[rrreed]

What are the full system specs including age and model of PSU? Are you running the OS off of an SSD.

I grabbed whatever I could find but let me know if you need more. Yes, the OS is running off the SSD.

Vostro 3888
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10400 CPU @ 2.90GHz 2.90 GHz
GPU: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630
PSU Model: H260EBM-00
Installed RAM: 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)
System Type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

OS
Edition: Windows 11 Pro
Version: 22H2
OS Build: 22621.2428
Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22674.1000.0

 

[rrreed]

With you doing the hard drive replacement to a SSD and also upgrading from 10 to 11, there are a couple of possibilities.
1) When you upgraded from 10 to 11, did you do an in-place upgrade or did you completely format and install clean?
2) Your description of it getting slower over time and the "disk" running hard makes me think something installed is likely slowing it down. Have you tried doing a clean boot via msconfig and see if the issue continues after doing so?

1) I cloned the old hard drive to the new SSD, so I can see where many issues would follow over. The SSD gave me more time before the system would slow but it still happens eventually.

2) No, I haven't. I can give that a try the next time that it slows down. I don't run much off from it. Normally it's just Firefox, Outlook, Excel and Acrobat PDF Viewer. But I've also worried about some kind of memory leak. I'm not sure what it would take to patch that up though.

 

[hedwar2011]

1) Doing a clone of a drive is ok, but yes, any and all problems will come with it if they exist.
2) You didn't mention this but did you move from a HDD to a SSD when you swapped the drives or did it originally have a SSD in it already? See next point.
3) A SSD isn't likely to experience mechanical "drag" like a HDD would because there are no physically moving parts inside like the old hard drives of yesteryear that could develop such things as "spindle drag" where the spindle would drag itself across the hard drive heads.
4) I would bargain there is something either running in the background or installed that is causing it to slow down and it appears hardware related but truly isn't.