Laptop slow/unresponsive & recovery won't work

mrochester · 24 Feb 2012 at 17:50

Hi all

I've got a friend who is experiencing some major slow down and unresponsiveness with his Windows 7 laptop. It's plenty powerful enough to run Windows 7 and I've had his check the usual (hard drive space, Malware Bytes scan, anti-virus, which did turn up some nasties). However, none of the obvious things have worked. He's also tried to restore the laptop by booting into the Dell recovery but not long after getting into this the laptop just switches itself off completely.

I'd be tempted to think that there's either some corruption or issue with the hard drive or there's something wrong with the RAM (most Windows installation failures I've found to be failing RAM) or possibly even overheating causing some slow downs.

Has anyone got any other thoughts?

Many thanks

M

Duke · 24 Feb 2012 at 17:59

I would carry out hard disk and mem test to make sure those are fine first. Hiren or UBCD can be burnt to CD if you don't have those sorts of tools handy.

mrochester · 24 Feb 2012 at 18:01

Duke said:
I would carry out hard disk and mem test to make sure those are fine first. Hiren or UBCD can be burnt to CD if you don't have those sorts of tools handy.

Memtest if a given for the RAM, but which hard disk diagnostic would you recommend? I would have advised chkdsk /r myself but I don't know whether that scan a hidden/unmapped partition.

Duke · 24 Feb 2012 at 20:43

If the chkdsk is fine then no need to run the manufacturers diag tool as its probably fine (only later if still issues). Btw chkdsk will scan any windows parition, just do chkdsk c: /r for example.

If possible try and take the HD out and scan it from another PC, as it may pick up more virus like boot sector ones.