My computer has all of a sudden gone "incredibly slow"

Wiry

Wiry

Wiry

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Nottinghamshire
Ok, so on Sunday, I defragmented my Hard drive as I analyzed it and it said something like 6%, so I thought I would get the most performance out of it by Degrag'ing it to increase the speed. While the operation was taking place *degrag*, i left my computer on until it was done--about 7 hours later, bearing in mind it was my storage drive, a Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB, basically that:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-336-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1953

But it was obviously 640GB, and I have about 50% of the space free on it. After it had finished I did a FULL virus check with "Microsoft security essentials" and got no virus' or malware detected. I then proceeded to launching Warhammer: Dawn of War II , on steam and I noticed it was running incredibly slow, aswell as taking excesive amounts of time to load the main screen, after about 10 freezes, 10 minutes later, which would usually take 10 seconds max to load up? I was extremely confused and frustrated. In the past, I have previously had several Blue Screen of Death's and was sort of thinking my Ram/Memory was the fault. Then all of a sudden, The game closed and came up with the follow error:

"A problem has been encountered and the program needs to close" ... so something similar to this popped up:

14:02:58.28 -- DOW2 Warnings Log --
14:02:58.28 c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\dawn of war 2\dow2.exe started at 2011-07-06 14:02
14:02:58.28 OS NT 5.1, 3072 MB Physical Memory, 2221 Mb Physical Available, 1311 Mb Virtual Available
14:02:58.28 RUN OPTIONS: -logs
14:02:58.28 WORKING DIR: 'c:\program files\steam\steamapps\common\dawn of war 2'
14:02:58.28 USER: 'Owner'
14:02:58.32 MOD -- Initializing mod 'DOW2', version '2.6.0', locale 'english'.
14:02:58.35 APP - Multi-threading Enabled
14:02:58.35 XTHREAD: Detected 2 core(s) with 2 hardware thread(s)
14:02:58.37 ParentalControls: No Games Explorer found.
14:02:58.40 NetworkManager::Create - creating network manager
XLiveInitialize- Failed to initialize XLive (error = 8007013d)
-- FATAL EXIT --
d:\dow2-release\src\shared\network\internal\service\live\l iveservice.cpp-65 !:

I didn't have a clue what was happening so I decided to restart my computer. Then the next error occurred ... "disk read error occurred, Press alt, ctrl, del to restart. In which I did so and it decided to boot succesfully this time. I then proceeded to trying Dawn of War II again and it worked (success!!) but 10 minutes into playing it, the same error occurred. I was really Pi**ed off to know what was a matter with my beloved computer! I then tried several other games and they all ran quite slow aswell--Or at least slower than usual. Lot's of programs were going into "not responding" and I was extremely frustrated, So I am stuck to know what the hell is a matter?!??!! :confused:
 
R088ieS86 said:
Run check disk (chkdsk) on your HDD.
Disk read errors tend to mean you have some faulty sectors on your drive.
Click to expand...

Ok , so i went into CHKDSK, and it started doing an operation, and I don't know on which hard drive? and it gave me the result "windows has checked the file system and found no problems"
 
sorry, it would have checked your main volume.

If you want to check specific drives load up command prompt (as admin) and use

chkdsk X: /r

*X: being the letter of the drive you want to check

/r will fix errors and if it finds bad sectors will recover data from them.

It might say it will need to do it next time the PC restarts
 
R088ieS86 said:
sorry, it would have checked your main volume.

If you want to check specific drives load up command prompt (as admin) and use

chkdsk X: /r

*X: being the letter of the drive you want to check

/r will fix errors and if it finds bad sectors will recover data from them.

It might say it will need to do it next time the PC restarts
Click to expand...

It came up with the same post, about it being fine and nothing wrong with it ? Are there any other error checking devices/programs that will reveal the problem :S ?
 
R088ieS86 said:
THats odd...
Yeah, Western Digital do their own software here
Click to expand...

I did the quick "mini" tests, and both drives passed them. If I ever get chance! I'll have to do the longer tests, but what else could be causing this if it is not the HDD's?
 
Very much sounds like a HDD issue. Maybe the drive was on its last legs and the constant read/writes required for de-fragmentation pushed it over the edge. Carry out a test for a long duration.
 
Wiry said:
It came up with the same post, about it being fine and nothing wrong with it ? Are there any other error checking devices/programs that will reveal the problem :S ?
Click to expand...

If you did that test in 5 minutes you didn't do the full test.

My Computer > Right click on the disk drive you want to check and select properties > Tools > Select check now and tick both options > Start

To check your system disk the PC will need to be restarted after you've clicked Start.
 
Ok so I've just started scanning my C drive and I'll do my B drive afterwards, I'm using WD DataGuard as the guy above posted, seems like a pretty impressive program. Also it's a full scan this time, so it's taking a fair bit of time xD ... I'll post back with the results some time tomorrow.
 
Ok, so I've done the "long" tests and both drives *B and C* have passed the longest test on WD Data LifeGuard...arghh wtf is up!
 
Have you tried running DOW since?
Have a look in windows event logs, have there being any more disk read errors in there since the one posted?
 
Out of interest, I know it might not seem appealing, could you try and start a new game on DOW? (is this possible - I have never played it)

The only thing I can think of is that your save file has become corrupt.

Edit: removed xp links.
 
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R088ieS86 said:
Out of interest, I know it might not seem appealing, could you try and start a new game on DOW? (is this possible - I have never played it)

The only thing I can think of is that your save file has become corrupt.

Edit: removed xp links.
Click to expand...

I can't actually launch the game--and instantly it comes up with that, before the load screen begins, it's slowly getting worse.... Also please remember that my whole pc in general is slow, not just DOW2, The only reason I mentioned this is due to when I played it the other night :S
 
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I think I'm gonna format both hard drives and change the OS drive, seen as though it's currently on a spinpoint F1 -- lol. I'll post back if my performance improves back to normal....
 
Your os is on a samsung disk and you checked it using a wd tool, is that even possible?
Or wise?

Anyway before a full os reinstall, how about you update your gfx drivers and then fully uninstall and reinstall dow if thats the only program giving errors?
 
i don't know how many times I've said it, but it's all my programs giving me grief and slow performance, and where do I start to reinstalling GPU drivers? Also, what's a good external hard drive for under £75, preferably usb3.0 and it'll have to be at least 750GB
 
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