Vista slowdown, HDD light blinking like mad, slow/non-shutdown

[hopfrog]

Hello all,


Just in the past few days as I have been using my PC I have noticed that after about half an hour, for some reason I get immense slowdown. Most often I have noticed it occurring while on the Internet and Firefox will stop loading pages (but not a network issue). The one major indicator that this is happening is that the HDD light starts blinking rapidly and continuously, more so than the intermittent flashing of regular use. If I try to shutdown the computer or restart it either takes forever or will not do it altogether, often while flashing up a screen that says "x program is preventing you from shutting down".

I am running Vista 64 and I have no idea what is going on. I have not loaded any new applications that I can think of in the past few days that would explain this behavior. Any ideas on what might be causing this? I can post the rest of my specs on request. Thanks in advance.

 

[edmond419]

if you really havn't installed or uninstalled anything, then it might be a virus

see if any software, like antivirus software is scheduled to scan half an hour after your computer booted?

and what program does it say is preventing the shutdown? does it happen if you do something else (like watch a movie from your hard drive) ?

 

[Zoron]

Wouldn't hurt to check your fans either... make sure there's no dust clogging anything up. It almost sounds as if you're having heat issues.