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

HereToday

CoastingHatbox said:

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.

If 3.5" caddies were a fiver. They are not. 2.5" caddies are a fiver.

CoastingHatbox

HereToday said:

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.

Did you read the original post? The OP has a new machine and wants to get access to the files.

And if you read what I wrote, It doesn't assume the disk is broken and suggest replacing it. It just prioritises recovering the OPs data in case the disk is broken, and then suggests doing a 0 write or random write to every sector of the disk as that would more than likely show up a problem with the disk and otherwise, leave it securely erased to go back into the machine in case the OP changes their mind about using it as a backup machine and chooses instead to gift/donate/sell it.

As for not using a SATA cable, you would have to plug the disk in after the machine has booted, which won't work if the machine SATA mode is IDE as oppose to AHCI because IDE mode is not hot pluggable. Or plug the disk in and then boot the machine, which carries the risk of booting from the potentially broken HDD which could hamper the efforts to recover data, if indeed the disk is on its last legs. Yes you might be able to start the BIOS utility and change the boot order or load the boot priorities menu, but that is subject to knowing the right key and timing, or as it is otherwise known, doing a merry dance.

And FTR I report your posts when they are abusive or blatant defamation. You seem to struggle with the difference between criticism and abuse and that is somewhat unpleasant.

OnAndUp

Thank you all for your input! 

Overall it is working better than it has for days, after I ran CHKDSK F / R from CMD last night. Most programs other than File Explorer (grrr!) are opening and working, just a little slow - but not unbearable. Start button still gone, but think I can live with that.

I've been able to Open Chrome and Microsoft Edge and have downloaded and ran CrystalDisk (couldn't have done any of that for the last few days).

Here's the log. Looks like there are some issues, but not sure how bad / serious? It doesn't mean much to me!

Neil_Jones

Yes, the CrystalDiskInfo suggests you need a new hard drive.  High bad sector count.  Back up your data now while you still can, and replace the drive.

CoastingHatbox

OnAndUp said:

Thank you all for your input! 

Overall it is working better than it has for days, after I ran CHKDSK F / R from CMD last night. Most programs other than File Explorer (grrr!) are opening and working, just a little slow - but not unbearable. Start button still gone, but think I can live with that.

I've been able to Open Chrome and Microsoft Explorer and have downloaded and ran CrystalDisk (couldn't have done any of that for the last few days).

Here's the log. Looks like there are some issues, but not sure how bad / serious? It doesn't mean much to me!

Not sure what you mean by 'start button gone' ... do you mean the start menu won't open?

Anyway, if those reallocated sector and pending sector counts are straight forward hex to decimal conversion, you have 168 already reallocated sectors and 10048 pending sector reallocations. If those pending sectors of disk can be successfully read and remapped to healthy sectors, the reallocated sector count will increase and the pending sector count will decrease.

The fact pending sector reallocations is so high, gives the impression this disk is not healthy. It is possible that this number increases as you try and recover the files you want to keep, if/when the disk fails to read the data you have requested from it. You want to minimise the amount this disk is now used, save for attempting to recover the data you want to keep.

OnAndUp

Thank you, much appreciated.

It's useful to know what I'm dealing with.

I've managed to get it running in safe mode letting me use File explorer so am copying my files to an External HDD.

As the 'knowledge' I do have is a selection of random stuff I've picked up. I've never actually used / been on Safe Mode before - which may be skipping something pretty basic that I should have known lol?!   

Oh, sorry I meant the Start Button still isn't working / nothing opens - rather than has gone. When you press it nothing happens!

[Deleted User]

Hi,

any options when you right click the start button?

HereToday

OnAndUp said:

Thank you, much appreciated.

It's useful to know what I'm dealing with.

I've managed to get it running in safe mode letting me use File explorer so am copying my files to an External HDD.

As the 'knowledge' I do have is a selection of random stuff I've picked up. I've never actually used / been on Safe Mode before - which may be skipping something pretty basic that I should have known lol?!   

Oh, sorry I meant the Start Button still isn't working / nothing opens - rather than has gone. When you press it nothing happens!

Once you get the SSD in there and install an OS to it, it will be a lot faster than when new. So a useful fallback device.

inspectorperez

"I've managed to get it running in safe mode letting me use File explorer......."

Glad my suggestion was of some use. It's certainly saved my bacon before!