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Thread: Unbelievably Slow PC

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    Unbelievably Slow PC

    Hey guys, interesting problem here.

    Basically, I was over at the parents at the weekend and was asked to help speed up their clunky old PC which is taking forever to load and navigate internet etc. My first thought was "it's not been cleared or anything" so did the usual quick tune up. This made not one bit of difference. Checked the HDD and it's only got maybe 40% of its capacity in use (1TB external harddrive being used for documents etc to keep the main HDD free). It's got 4gb of RAM (although only 32b OS so 3gb max in use). I tried doing a clean install of Windows 7 but it still kept the windows.old folder saved.

    What I'm wondering is, given the components themselves should be more than adequate for running a fairly fast system, is there a way to completely eradicate every trace of data on the HDD and then reinstall the OS as if it was popping out of the box from a shop? So no old documents, programmes, trojans etc. Just a fresh OS install? Or are there any other recommendations you could suggest? Also, if you could advise how to do the complete wipe and reinstall then that would be good

    Thanks!!!

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Just delete the partition when installing windows = job done.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Is the CPU overloaded or HDD constantly being accessed? Virus scanning and what not. Could be a nasty at work.

    Depending on the size of the internal HDD maybe shortstroke it; a 20% first partition for windows and the main software and everything else on a second partition. My retail win 7 has 32 and 64 bit versions; not sure what you have and whether you can choose with every version. They should be downloadable.

    WRT reinstalling; set the bios to boot form cd and insert the windows cd before restarting; I think it does everything for you. Maybe make sure you have any drivers and passwords saved somewhere safe.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Installing 64 bit windows with a 32 bit Windows 7 key should work, but as you only just did an install I would expect you to end up phoning the automated Microsoft line to activate it and get a lot of button pressing to do.

    Did you check inside the machine for furred up heatsinks?

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    The first thing I check with an older PC that has a CD/DVD drive with a really slow boot/load/run issue is the DMA status of the drives from the properties of the IDE/SATA controllers in Device manager. You're looking for DMA 4-6, anything with PIO is going to be slow - down to ~4 MB transfer speed!

    All it takes is a scratched CD to be left in the drive for a while to trigger this scenario.

    http://winhlp.com/node/10

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Could be the HDD is on it's last legs too. A drive on it's way out can show exactly those symptoms. You might want to grab gsmartcontrol or HDtune to check.

    But anyway, if there is nothing on that PC which needs keeping, you might as well do a wipe when re-installing. If it is still slow afterwards, a poorly HDD would be my first thing to check.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    As far as I'm aware the computer should only be being used for googling and emails so unless there's a huge backlog of stuff happening in the background and not showing up on task manager (could be potentially?) it might not be that. It's just really strange!

    When partitioning, I set up an SSD with the OS on it and then had a separate HDD for my programmes, but I still have to manually tell each thing I download to go to the HDD. Is there a way to make it so the HDD is the default download location, or in this case make it so a separate partition is the default instead of the one the windows OS is installed on?

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    I assume you're referring to downloading from the browser? If so which browser? My Chrome and Firefox installs are both configured to point to e:\downloads as the default download location, should be easy enough to do the same for yours.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Quote Originally Posted by kompukare View Post
    Could be the HDD is on it's last legs too. A drive on it's way out can show exactly those symptoms. You might want to grab gsmartcontrol or HDtune to check.

    But anyway, if there is nothing on that PC which needs keeping, you might as well do a wipe when re-installing. If it is still slow afterwards, a poorly HDD would be my first thing to check.
    The computer itself was bought maybe 5 years ago as a pre-built thing from ebuyer if my memory serves me well, so maybe the HDD is getting on a bit. I'll have a look at those programs you suggested there and see what that does. Do those programs tell you something like "HDD is working at 25% efficiency" or "HDD is busted"?

    Quote Originally Posted by Splash View Post
    I assume you're referring to downloading from the browser? If so which browser? My Chrome and Firefox installs are both configured to point to e:\downloads as the default download location, should be easy enough to do the same for yours.
    Not just from the browser but also for general programmes, for example Microsoft Office I used the CD but it still specified the C(?) drive (whichever one I had the OS assigned to) as the source for the download and I have to manually go back and tell it to redirect. It's not a problem for me as I know to keep an eye out for it, but my dear parents may just click through and end up cramming their OS partition with junk

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Quote Originally Posted by james.daly91 View Post
    The computer itself was bought maybe 5 years ago as a pre-built thing from ebuyer if my memory serves me well, so maybe the HDD is getting on a bit. I'll have a look at those programs you suggested there and see what that does. Do those programs tell you something like "HDD is working at 25% efficiency" or "HDD is busted"?
    Well, gmstartcontrol will show you the SMART status which is the internal monitoring/log from the drive. Not 100% reliable since no SMART errors do not mean the drive is good but if you do get SMART errors (especially re-allocated sectors or - and this is what I suspect if you have a computer which is strangely slow - seek errors) then you can be pretty certain that the drive is on it's last legs.

    Of course, running tests on a dying drive might kill it. So I only advise it if everything's backed up.

    If it's not the drive, it could be device which is either going bad or has a bad drive. Process Explorer can give you some hints (generally shows up as high Hardware Interrupts) but finding which device it is, is then a matter of trial an error (disable as much as possible in the BIOS or device manager and see if that cures it, then try to find a better driver or live without that device).

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Brill, I'll have a look at that when I get the chance then. If it is the HDD I might just get them a new one and do a clean install anyway to play it safe

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Another thing to look out for in the SMART data is "Pending Sectors". These are dead sectors, pending re-allocation, and trying to read one will result in the machine hanging for some time.

    But take a screwdriver and check the heatsinks aren't clogged and causing the CPU to overheat. It is a very simple check, and very fast to cure. Blow the dust off outside though, it gets really messy

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Quote Originally Posted by kompukare View Post
    Well, gmstartcontrol will show you the SMART status which is the internal monitoring/log from the drive. Not 100% reliable since no SMART errors do not mean the drive is good but if you do get SMART errors (especially re-allocated sectors or - and this is what I suspect if you have a computer which is strangely slow - seek errors) then you can be pretty certain that the drive is on it's last legs.

    Of course, running tests on a dying drive might kill it. So I only advise it if everything's backed up.

    If it's not the drive, it could be device which is either going bad or has a bad drive. Process Explorer can give you some hints (generally shows up as high Hardware Interrupts) but finding which device it is, is then a matter of trial an error (disable as much as possible in the BIOS or device manager and see if that cures it, then try to find a better driver or live without that device).
    The results from the scan are (hopefully) below, but I don't really know what they mean - anyone able to help?


    windows screenshot program
    Last edited by james.daly91; 17-03-2014 at 06:59 PM.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Problem with SMART is that it measures whatever the manufacturer wants it to!

    If there is a problem then gsmartcontrol would highlight the attribute tab in red though.

    199 UDMA CRC error count sounds like a poor connector or cable.
    196 is ok
    8 Seek time doesn't sound look good but unsure if that's it (never seen that before)

    You might have to wait for some SMART expert or google the results. BTW, each entry has a hover-over pop-up help associated with it.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    Only other red flag there is that the drive has hit 49 degrees which is pretty toasty but the drive seems happy with that. It seems to have survived it well.

    #8 looks fine looking at the normalized value of 133 if the threshold is all the way down at 20. (edit to add: Normalized values start high and drop lower as the drive starts to fail).

    So power the machine off, open it up, and if you can't replace the drive cable then just unplug it and plug it back in again.

    While you are in there, vacuum out all the dust.

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    Re: Unbelievably Slow PC

    If you're getting tired of finding ways to fix things you could just do a fresh install of Windows - of course, pack all of your essential files (personal, office, game saves, etc.) on a different drive first before you proceed.

    It doesn't really take that long.

    Sometimes the cause of a slow system is a very bad registry, there might be tons of entries there that should no longer exist and might cause some problems with other programs and hardware.

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