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Problem description:Crappy old Pavilion slows to a crawl after booting, somewhat inconsistently. After logging in, the computer works fine at first, but eventually (and this period varies) things will begin to lag. The point at which this happens is distinctly audible: the hard drive suddenly becomes quiet. Observing the Task Manager as the computer flips from normal operation to slowdown (as it goes quiet), the hard drive activity drops to basically a flat line. It's labeled as 100% active throughout. The slowdown doesn't affect everything equally. If I'm already watching a video in Chrome, it'll continue playing after the system goes "quiet", albeit w/ occasional stuttering. I can even change tabs w/o much issue. But new tabs will load very slowly. Interacting with any of the Windows interface (e.g., the taskbar, moving windows) will usually make much of the screen unresponsive for an extended period of time, but the mouse moves w/o lag. Launching new programs is basically out of the question, and eventually whatever was already running becomes similarly slow to respond. To make one thing clear: a lot of actions will cause the computer to lag when the hard drive has already become "quiet" (as mentioned up top), but I don't know whether I can actually influence when it enters the "quiet" state. Things are deteriorating. Originally I was going to write that lag is starting to show up earlier than before, but after checking again, it's now much worse. Out of five tries, I only managed to launch chrome once before the screen became unresponsive (outside Safe Mode). (I suppose it's possible it's related to how long the computer's been on beforehand) In Safe Mode everything works fine. I've spent hours in Networked Safe Mode w/o any sign of the symptoms. (Luckily I bound Safe Mode booting to F8 before it was too late). Attempted fixes: I assumed it was an infection or some sort of hardware failure. I went through the usual tests and fixes. I ran scans with Malwarebytes, Tdsskiller, Eset. Nothing major was found. Only Tdsskiller was run on a normal boot. The other scans were too long to complete outside Safe Mode. I ran a chkdsk fix. (chkdsk /f /r) I took out the video card, RAM sticks one by one, secondary hdd, cleaned the casing, the CPU heatsink (all these separately). The behavior persisted. I was going to resort to a Windows Refresh, but the mouse and keyboard were unresponsive when the first prompt came up (asking about keyboard layout). I was convinced this meant some nasty virus was the culprit, but apparently its a USB driver-related bug some HP upgraded Win10 PCs have. (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...21-e8d0855d4ee7) Recent changes: Nothing I can think of -- Operating system: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (upgraded from 7) System specs: HP Pavilion P6000 Series AMD Phenom II X4 830, 2800 Mhz 6GB of DDR3 RAM ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series Seagate 750GB HDD for OS, WD 320GB from an older PC (yes, it's a Costco-bought clunker) Location: NJ, USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes. I've spent the last two days, and three nights trying to figure out what's wrong.
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Oct 14, 2016 09:34
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:59 |
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does event viewer say anything
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Oct 14, 2016 09:41
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Weird Al Yankadick posted:does event viewer say anything Could you tell me how to find what's specifically relevant?
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Oct 14, 2016 09:43
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Rinkles posted:Could you tell me how to find what's specifically relevant? i would just be checking what it says at the exact time the freezing happens
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Oct 14, 2016 09:45
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Reset and waited for the lag, noting the time (4:53AM). But I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be looking. Under Application Logs, there was this error half a minute a minute or so before, repeated 4 times (10/14/2016 4:52:16 AM) code:code:
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Oct 14, 2016 10:14
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Run Crystal Disk Info (portable edition ZIP) and post a screenshot of the window for your system drive. If any drive shows Caution or Bad it has failed and will need to be replaced. If that looks good, see if the system can complete at least one full pass of Memtest86+ without errors.
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Oct 14, 2016 16:22
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 -- I'll try the Memtest now. Thanks for the help so far.
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Oct 14, 2016 19:59
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Your harddrive has failed, which explains your issues. Back up any files that are important to you ASAP before it dies completely. Once you get a new drive you can reinstall Windows.
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Oct 14, 2016 21:13
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I guess I should consider myself lucky, since it's still browsable. I immediately tried doing a backup when things starting acting funny, but apparently you can't do a full backup from safe mode. I manually copied the most important directories. I'm not sure if I'm going to bother (I was planning on buying a new PC soon), but would cloning the image be a bad idea in the state it's in? Thanks for your time.
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Oct 14, 2016 21:24
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:59 |
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I don't think there's much point in doing any cloning of a failed drive.
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Oct 15, 2016 09:40
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