Laptop 3rys old I'm working on for a friend has been swept clean of virus'es etc. In fact its a fresh XP install. Yet it still running slowly. I initially found some bad clusters using chkdsk but after running it a couple of times, the errors seems to have fixed/marked etc. The machine is still running slower than I'd expect. Would that suggest the HD might be on its way out to you?
Slow system - Impending HD failure
- Thread starter Sparky191
- Start date
Man of Honour
It could do but remember laptop hard drives are normally slower than desktop hard drives anyway. Have you tried running HDTach to see how it compares to other similar hard drives? What about the rest of the laptops specification? Maybe your expectations are a shade unrealistic if they are based on desktop performance 
Associate
How much RAM does the laptop have? If it is three years old I imagine it would be less than what you would find in a laptop today (if it was not a high-spec laptop for the time) also what is the shared memory of the onboard graphics. this can largely redice the RAM available to the computer
Thanks for the replies.
Regardless of the RAM (which incidentally I upped from 256mb to 512mb) its only used for office work, and the user has been using the same system for 3 yrs so its not that its slow. But that its got suddenly slower in the past couple of weeks.
Theres was (based on info from the user) a corrupt MS update that failed or as I'm susupecting HD corruption that trashed part of Outlook. Bad clusters found and repaired. So the machine could not get email and from that point was running very slow. After spending 2 days looking for unsuccessfully looking a fix, and cleaning it up. I just reinstalled windows. So its working now. However the user reports the machine is still slow, and to be honest I thought it was myself. I've warned them that I suspect the HD. They've asked me to install a new one, just in case. I was wondering what the HD guru's here thought.
Coincidentally I'm actually also working on another Laptop thats dog slow aswell, but I reckon that because Norton SystemWorks was on it. Even after thats been removed, (sheer hell) it doesn't feel as nippy as I'd expect. My own laptop feels faster with a slighty worse spec. I don't feel like another fresh install of Xp at this point.
Regardless of the RAM (which incidentally I upped from 256mb to 512mb) its only used for office work, and the user has been using the same system for 3 yrs so its not that its slow. But that its got suddenly slower in the past couple of weeks.
Theres was (based on info from the user) a corrupt MS update that failed or as I'm susupecting HD corruption that trashed part of Outlook. Bad clusters found and repaired. So the machine could not get email and from that point was running very slow. After spending 2 days looking for unsuccessfully looking a fix, and cleaning it up. I just reinstalled windows. So its working now. However the user reports the machine is still slow, and to be honest I thought it was myself. I've warned them that I suspect the HD. They've asked me to install a new one, just in case. I was wondering what the HD guru's here thought.
Coincidentally I'm actually also working on another Laptop thats dog slow aswell, but I reckon that because Norton SystemWorks was on it. Even after thats been removed, (sheer hell) it doesn't feel as nippy as I'd expect. My own laptop feels faster with a slighty worse spec. I don't feel like another fresh install of Xp at this point.
Associate
Why dont you have a look at the Smart status of the HDD - something like Speedfan will let you do that.
M
M
If you go to the Manufacturer's website they will have diagnostic utilities that you can download free, that will tell you exactly what's going on. Check what mode the hdd is running in, iirc everytime windows encounters an error on the drive it assumes that it is running too quickly and essentially 'slows' it down. Sounds like what's happening. You should be able to get a cheap replacement drive off the net, might be worth a quick swap if the utils show it dying.