Windows 7 progressive slows down after boot untill blue screen

[Kabbage318]

I've had this dell laptop for a few years now, everything has been for the most part fine other than a run-in with some malware last year and a problem with the fan. Now after I boot it up it's constantly writing to disk, and slows down considerably the more I use it. I can't use it continally doing different things for more than 5 minutes before it can't run Windows Aero, then a few more minutes at a blisteringly slow rate before blue screening. Pretty much the only thing I can do on it is listen to misic and after an hour or two that stops working too. I have to type this up on my tablet because I can't even get it to open google chrome. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Current specs: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Intell i3 processor, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... After a few years I like to do a "clean install" OS on them... to get the Speed back or totally remove any "Malware" Or Hardrive reasons...
You would be surpised how much Data/Web/Cookies/Programs can get left behind and not deleted off your HD... Un-less you know where to look B )
The other thing is your RAM size could be upgraded to 8gb for better Windows performance.
Another thing is you could have given permission to Programs to " auto load " or "Search the Web" at Windows startup... taking all your CPU cycles.

 

[johnbl]

you should start event viewer and look at the administrative events errors. Mostly looking for errors from the disk subsystem.
you might even download crystaldiskinfo.exe and look at the smart error reported by your drive.

a older laptop with a spinning drive will wear as the drive is working or is bumped, this caused the heads of the drive to become misaligned with the sector markers on the spinning disk. Normally, a disk controller can read a whole track on a disk as the disk spins in one revolution. when the markers are not alligned the disk has to spin one revolution for each sector on a track on the disk. if the disk is really far out of alignment, it may have to try many times per each sector to read it without errors.

normally, you would replace the drive or do a full format on the drive and reinstall the OS. don't do a quick format or you will end up where you started. (I tend to replace the drives with solid state drives because they are pretty cheap and really tend to speed the system up, and if they fail you still get to read your data off of them. spinning drives are much harder to recover the data.

 

[Kabbage318]

you should start event viewer and look at the administrative events errors. Mostly looking for errors from the disk subsystem.
you might even download crystaldiskinfo.exe and look at the smart error reported by your drive.

a older laptop with a spinning drive will wear as the drive is working or is bumped, this caused the heads of the drive to become misaligned with the sector markers on the spinning disk. Normally, a disk controller can read a whole track on a disk as the disk spins in one revolution. when the markers are not alligned the disk has to spin one revolution for each sector on a track on the disk. if the disk is really far out of alignment, it may have to try many times per each sector to read it without errors.

normally, you would replace the drive or do a full format on the drive and reinstall the OS. don't do a quick format or you will end up where you started. (I tend to replace the drives with solid state drives because they are pretty cheap and really tend to speed the system up, and if they fail you still get to read your data off of them. spinning drives are much harder to recover the data.

So I looked at the event log and the last disc error was in June, although I'm getting a lot of errors fron atapi saying "The driver detected a controller error om \Device\Idle\IdlePort0."

I also went and ran crystaldiskinfo and the only issue is that it's saying my reallocated sectors count is 100

 

[johnbl]

atapi is AT Attachment Packet Interface
if you are getting errors from a device like a CD or DVD player you might boot into BIOS and disable the device.
I would find out what device \Device\Idle\IdlePort0 is
maybe look in windows control panel, device manager or go to dell tech support for your machine. Windows will call a bugcheck when the timeout period expires.

if the device is broken the hardware and windows is still trying to talk to it over and over and waiting for some timeout period before it retries. This could have a high CPU cost that would slow your system down.

I guess it could even be a device that goes to sleep and does not wake up. In that case you would need a updated driver for the device. (get from the dell website if they have a update)

you should start event viewer and look at the administrative events errors. Mostly looking for errors from the disk subsystem.
you might even download crystaldiskinfo.exe and look at the smart error reported by your drive.

a older laptop with a spinning drive will wear as the drive is working or is bumped, this caused the heads of the drive to become misaligned with the sector markers on the spinning disk. Normally, a disk controller can read a whole track on a disk as the disk spins in one revolution. when the markers are not alligned the disk has to spin one revolution for each sector on a track on the disk. if the disk is really far out of alignment, it may have to try many times per each sector to read it without errors.

normally, you would replace the drive or do a full format on the drive and reinstall the OS. don't do a quick format or you will end up where you started. (I tend to replace the drives with solid state drives because they are pretty cheap and really tend to speed the system up, and if they fail you still get to read your data off of them. spinning drives are much harder to recover the data.

So I looked at the event log and the last disc error was in June, although I'm getting a lot of errors fron atapi saying "The driver detected a controller error om \Device\Idle\IdlePort0."

I also went and ran crystaldiskinfo and the only issue is that it's saying my reallocated sectors count is 100

 

[Michael Clancy]

I also recommend a fresh install of the os. If that is not possible then whatever built in 'fresh option' you have is the next best thing.