slow unresponsive laptop

JBeck

JBeck

JBeck

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Lunatic asylum
Hello.

Just bought a cheapish laptop and it doesn't appear to be running right at all. Basically it's very slow and unresponsive. Clicking the start orb for example takes a second or so to open the menu, then while mousing over the it tends to lag. Opening various windows, chrome or anything takes a second or three to respond. even clicking on 'close' on something takes time to respond. So have a done a clean install of win 7 and it is still the same. I then noticed that there was some rhythmic HDD activity, on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, continually. So i'm thinking it's the HDD is on it's way out (would the symptoms seem to suggest that to you?).

I have run HD Tune, clicked on the 'health' tab and it has come up with the following errors.

Reallocated sector count - warning
Reallocated event count - warning the drive has damaged sectors
Interface CRC error count - attention

So I'm thinking that it is indeed the HDD but then, and actually while I'm typing this I am running the slow error scan in HD tune and the rhythmic seeking has stopped and the drive is completely silent and more importantly, the whole laptop is as fast as it should be. everything opens quickly, no lag no nothing untoward... Now I'm confused, why, while under stress from HD tune would the HDD suddenly perform better?

Or is it not actually the HDD at fault, is some other resource hogging it but whilst HD tune is running and testing, it's taking away the ability of that something else to have a detrimental effect on the drive?

Opinions please?
 
best thing to do is run a check disk on the drive, this will check and fix any errors on the HDD.

might be worth checking event viewer as if the drive has bad sectors errors will appear in there.

to access event viewer do the following

go to start, then control panel, once in there click on administrative tools and then event viewer. once that has loaded double click on windows logs on the left and then click on system which will appear under the folder.

check the logs on the right for anything in red

to do a check disk do the following.

click on start and then go to computer, right click on the drive and go to properties, once here click on tools and then under error checking you will see a button that says check now....

on the next box that appears tick the two boxes and press start, you will get a message stating that the laptop needs re starting but be warned this can take awhile to run so do it when your not planning on using the laptop for awhile and let this run through.

should run better but if performance keeps degrading then replace the drive. might be worth backing up anything you don't want to loose in case the drive dies so you don't loose anything
 
Last edited:
Ok thanks for the info. HD tune just finished checking for erros and has found none which is surprising.

I'll try what you have said, see what happens.

cheers.
 
ED209 said:
no problem, hope it helps

did you buy the laptop with the OS already installed on?
Click to expand...
Yes OS already installed, I also did a factory reset using recovery partition.

So event viewer has a couple of events but none that i think could be the problem.

A couple of bit-locker events, encrypted volume check, volume information cannot be read. WLAN autoconfig has stopped and a error in regards to NTFS encountered a non retryable error and could not start. Even scrolling through that list it kept stopping and lagging behind me scrolling down.

I ran diskcheck, it showed no errors, I was expecting some kind of log when it rebooted but nothing.

XfXGamer2014 said:
I would bang a SSD in it and get windows on it fresh. Chances are that would fix your problems.
Click to expand...
To be honest it should be fine with the standard HDD and the fresh recovery, I'm talking serious slowness here not just slightly slow. Even typing this the words are having to ctach up with my typing...

I have a small drive here guess I'll try it with that on a clean install and see what happens.

Cheers.
 
the event logs from scan disk appear in event viewer.

if you have a spare drive see if you can do a fresh install and see if the errors go, if it works see if you can clone the original drive unless your happy to have it with a clean install.

to be honest if I brought a second hand laptop the first thing I would do is a clean install as you never know what is on there from the previous owner
 
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