Windows suddenly became unusuably slow

[Milky_]

I was using my laptop earlier, everything was fine. Left it running for few hours, when i came back to it, i noticed that screen has turned black and isnt responding. I tried restarting computer, got stuck at "windows loading" screen. Computer couldnt boot for like 20 mins. Eventually it did boot but it was extremely slow. Every action i would make would take like half an hour to complete. I tried booting into safe mode but results were pretty much the same - slow boot and very slow processing. Can I do anything before doing a clean reinstall?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Milky_,

Well, that is unpleasant. There could be something wrong with your drive.

Do you have some data stored on it? In case you do, you can try to back up the most important data stored on it. (save it to an external drive let's say)
In case the process is really slow, you can boot up Ubuntu from a CD or a flash drive, access the drive and try to transfer the data to another HDD. (external)
Thread on that: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Once you've backed your data, you can test the drive and see if there's something wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[Milky_]

Thanks for the answer. I successfully backed up my data through ubuntu which was a great relief for me. HDD diagnostic tool showed a lot of errors so I'm considering changing my drive. Your answer was very helpful, thanks again.