*Really* slow lappy

Idiophreak

Hi All,

I was watching a movie in MCE on my lappy (acer 5050) the other day and it started to stutter a little as it was playing. I didn't really think a lot of it, just thought it was due a reboot. Noticed that youtube vids etc, too, would stutter, especially at the start while it was caching. Once it was cached, it would work fine.

Anyway, yesterday I tried rebooting...took *so long* to start up - around 20 minutes on the windows xp screen (with the little blue bar whizzing across). just rebooted again and it took the same kind of time.

All the windows sounds stutter a little when played, which is odd and the whole systems just overwhelmingly laggy. I'm also having problems getting it online and MCE no longer recognises the soundcard.

I defragged several times a couple of weeks back, so the disk's neat and tidy and I've run malware bytes, avg and spybot on the thing, it seems pretty clean.

Is there anything in hardware that could cause this? The thing runs pretty hot (foolishly I tend to stand it on a leather footstool that doesn't help).

Almost seems like it's struggling to access the HDD, but not sure that explains all the symptoms.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

5bellies_2

Most of the symptoms suggest a failing hard drive. Go into My Computer, right click on your hard drive (C, not the data D), click Properties, then the Tools tab and the Check Now... button. Check both of the checkboxes and click start. It will tell you it needs to reboot. Click OK and then OK all the open windows and it'll give you a Yes/No reboot question. Say yes and let it run.

If it finds one bad sector/cluster get the drive replaced.

Idiophreak

Hi 5bellies - thanks for your help.

The disk check took something like 9 hours to complete, so I was actually asleep when it completed - is there any way of checking the results retrospectively?

aliEnRIK

Idiophreak wrote: »

Hi 5bellies - thanks for your help.

The disk check took something like 9 hours to complete, so I was actually asleep when it completed - is there any way of checking the results retrospectively?

The fact it took 9 hours means that its almost certainly on its way out (But just about to be able to work so has theres no errors I assume)

Airwolf1

Mine took several hours the other night, but I was doing a thorough scan and it was fixing as it went along. Have a 1TB hard drive.

I'm wondering if the OP's laptop is simply cluttered, it may have been defragged, but what about temp internet files, programs starting on start up, is the recycle bin empty etc? It could also be a low spec machine too to add to all of these.

Idiophreak

Airwolf1 wrote: »

I'm wondering if the OP's laptop is simply cluttered, it may have been defragged, but what about temp internet files, programs starting on start up, is the recycle bin empty etc? It could also be a low spec machine too to add to all of these.

No, the system itself is in decent shape...20% free on the C drive, no temp files, empty recycle bin...a fair amount of mess in the system tray, but that's always the way with lappies these days, innit.

The fact the problem started so suddenly I guess rules that kinda thing out, anyway...

the machine itself isn't a powerhouse, but it's OK and I upgraded the ram to help out (think it's 1gb overall now).

basmic

Out of interest, what are your reported temperatures in SpeedFan (link)?

basmic

Oh and once you've installed SpeedFan, select the S.M.A.R.T. tab, choose your hard disk in the drop down menu, and click the Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk button.

Airwolf1

If you have a few bits in the system tray, all these are running at start up presumably.

Click on start, then "run" and type in msconfig and ok. In the box that appears, click on the start up tab. You can uncheck items like messenger, itunes, printers and goodness knows what else.

Check here and simply type in the name of the item on the left of the box you're looking at.

If you do this, when you reboot, you'll get a box with a message, simply tick the box and ok.

Airwolf1

Sorry - further to my last note...that link will basically tell you if you need ithe program running at start up or not.

Idiophreak

Hi again,

Ran speedfan - got the following results:
HDD temp: 38 (avg for this kinda hdd is 40, apparently)
Temp1: 77
Core: 70
(was quite surprised, thought it would be hotter than that).

The SMART test showed everything as very good except:

(name, current, cycle, overall)
Power on hours count, 86, 5618, Normal
Load cycle count, 87, 130870, Good
Loaded hours, 94, 2439, Good

It then goes on to say I have one "pending" sector and gives the summary:
Fitness: 99%, Performance: 100%

I've also stripped down my system tray /startup items and that's not made any difference.

Do we think that 1 sector's enough to screw the whole thing up so badly?

Interestingly, I had to copy the install for speedfan from a USB to the HDD and it went on without any delay or anything, so the HDD was clearly working OK then. Any more thoughts?