In a pickle?! Desktop Painfully Slow - Apps won't open, hanging / crashing - no Start Button!

OnAndUp

Hi everyone 

Over the years I've had some amazing help and learnt a lot from people on this forum, which I'm forever grateful for - truly! 

I could really do with some assistance right now!

My desktop running Windows 10, which is 7 years has been a bit niggly since a while, but mainly bearable / usable. Annoyingly a lot of issues often happen after Windows updates, then eventually it seemed to sort itself out and be running well again.

Since the start of the week it's literally gone to crap, and then some?!  Some things that were working at the start of the week when the problems got worse, no longer are working too.

It's painfully... slow, and most apps are either not opening at all, or starting to open / opening ok - then crashing / hanging / closing on their own. Nothing happens when you press the start button.

I have some basic knowledge, but am winging it, and now tearing my hair out - ready to throw it through the window at this point tbh!  

So far I have -

~ Tried doing a system restore to the oldest point option it gave me. It worked, but no better / possibly slightly worse after?!

~ Ran CHKDSK

~ Ran SFC/scannow - which said it found some errors and was only able to repair some.

~ Ran Windows defender / Malwarebytes / Spybot.

I can't open the troubleshooter and try running that, or Windows update to try and run that see if updating fixes it. 

I've actually bought a new desktop just before Christmas, so I only need it to work to sort through it / copy files across etc really now. Although I was previously planning on keeping it as a backup / storage as it's a micro one so doesn't take up much space. So it will be a bit frustrating if it's now unusable for that too.

Hoping there's a quick relatively simple.. fix just to get it going well enough to sort my files. 

If you've got this far, thank you!! 

[Deleted User]

First impressions is that your hard disk is failing from the symptoms so nothing really you can do about it other than backup / copy any essential data immediately and then if you want to continue to re-use the PC, replace the hard disk.

HereToday

.....with a solid state drive.

Just finishing tallmansix's statement.

Cost from a mere £20. Does your PC have a brand name and model number? It's usually a very easy job. No more than five to ten minutes for the physical swap.

You can use a caddy or adapter to connect the old drive to the new PC in an attempt to retrieve files. other than that, stop using the drive. Now it's just file saving mode. 

Spank

Download and run crystaldiskinfo.

It will tell you if your drive is good or going bad.

OnAndUp

Thanks so much to you all for replying! 😃

I'm not sure if it's totally the hard drive, or something else. When I do the CMD get disk drive status (as suggested on Google?!) it shows as OK for the C & D Drive. Not sure if that's reliable?

Since I posted earlier I have ran CHKDSK again... (either F or R, can't remember which! ) I can now open and do stuff on programs like settings, Windows updates etc, which wouldn't open properly earlier.

Unfortunately File explorer which is what I need to access / use is still unusable. Keeps freezing, and then closing on its own.

I've also managed to open Task Manager and it was showing 72% RAM being used when I wasn't really doing anything, and only had settings app and Task Manager open. Not sure if that's significant!

OnAndUp

Spank said:

Download and run crystaldiskinfo.

It will tell you if your drive is good or going bad.

Thank you - will try that next!
Crossposted! Said the above ^ before I saw your comment.

inspectorperez

Have you tried booting up in Safe Mode with WiFi turned off ?
That might at least give you access to file explorer and the files you wish to copy.

CoastingHatbox

I'm not sure how, from the op, anyone has deduced that it is the hard drive at fault. It might be a hard disk drive fault, because of the "sfc /scannow" issues identified but it could be corruption caused by a number of problems.

As this is the old machine, and the OP wants to recover there data, if the disk is failing*, then the worst thing you can do is continually boot the machine and try and solve the problem.

I would suggest:

• buy a USB/HDD dock to plug into the new machine (from about £23 for a dual bay, which is probably more useful in future)
  
• boot up the new machine
• remove the hdd from the old machine
• put hdd from old machine in dock
• attempt to copy required files from old hdd to new machine

Once that is done, I would suggest  overwriting the data on the old hard disk with tool of choice (DBAN for example), and if it doesn't blow up (suggesting the disk is in fact okay), put it back into the old machine and reinstall windows. Then it can be used as a spare machine or passed on to a new owner etc.

As an aside, on Linux I would actually run something called badblocks with several passes on a suspect hard disk. It writes random data to each block of the disk, reads it back and verifies it. It is a slow but thorough process and helps ensure the the right decision is made in terms of continuing to use or binning a hard disk. This type of testing is less useful with SSDs. I pretty much rely on smartmontools to run diagnostics on those, which I have scheduled to run periodically.

*In this situation, I do always treat the situation as if the disk is failing and prioritise recovering data, as depending on the mode of failure, any attempts to solve the underlying problem can hamper data recovery

J_B

CoastingHatbox said:

I would suggest:

• buy a USB/HDD dock to plug into the new machine (from about £23 for a dual bay, which is probably more useful in future)
  

Or maybe, just a caddy off ebay for under a fiver perhaps?

MSE remember!

CoastingHatbox

J_B said:

CoastingHatbox said:

I would suggest:

• buy a USB/HDD dock to plug into the new machine (from about £23 for a dual bay, which is probably more useful in future)
  

Or maybe, just a caddy off ebay for under a fiver perhaps?

MSE remember!

Good shout.

HereToday

CoastingHatbox said:

I'm not sure how, from the op, anyone has deduced that it is the hard drive at fault. It might be a hard disk drive fault, because of the "sfc /scannow" issues identified but it could be corruption caused by a number of problems.

As this is the old machine, and the OP wants to recover there data, if the disk is failing*, then the worst thing you can do is continually boot the machine and try and solve the problem.

I would suggest:

• buy a USB/HDD dock to plug into the new machine (from about £23 for a dual bay, which is probably more useful in future)
  
• boot up the new machine
• remove the hdd from the old machine
• put hdd from old machine in dock
• attempt to copy required files from old hdd to new machine

Once that is done, I would suggest  overwriting the data on the old hard disk with tool of choice (DBAN for example), and if it doesn't blow up (suggesting the disk is in fact okay), put it back into the old machine and reinstall windows. Then it can be used as a spare machine or passed on to a new owner etc.

As an aside, on Linux I would actually run something called badblocks with several passes on a suspect hard disk. It writes random data to each block of the disk, reads it back and verifies it. It is a slow but thorough process and helps ensure the the right decision is made in terms of continuing to use or binning a hard disk. This type of testing is less useful with SSDs. I pretty much rely on smartmontools to run diagnostics on those, which I have scheduled to run periodically.

*In this situation, I do always treat the situation as if the disk is failing and prioritise recovering data, as depending on the mode of failure, any attempts to solve the underlying problem can hamper data recovery

Sorry what?
OP can buy a new SSD for £20 and save himself a lot of pain in following your suggestion of

• buying a USB/HDD dock to plug into the new machine (from about £23 for a dual bay, which is probably more useful in future)
  
• boot up the new machine
• remove the hdd from the old machine
• put hdd from old machine in dock
• attempt to copy required files from old hdd to new machine

Why would they simply not attach the old HDD to the new machine for the cost of a SATA cable?

You overcomplicate things. When it is pointed out, you you run to the moderators with a complaint. That is somewhat unpleasant.
So the £23 spent on a dock can be spent on an SSD and SATA cable.

First you say that you don't know how we deduced the the HDD is failing and then you state that you always treat such a situation as a failing hard disk.
So why are you denigrating us for doing the same??
Seriously my friend, you need to learn to take a bit of criticism without the need to make a huge deal out of it....or just put me on ignore.