everything has suddenly gotten slow...

[razer121]

so since release of windows 7 i must of installed it 5 times now due to virus issues...but now im stuck with a new one! its just slow..i mean SUPER slow, for instance if i open a picture and click next to the next picture, it will take about 10 seconds to move along and load the next picture! i mean come on iv egot an i5 FFS! so i defraged the drive...no difference i also ran a few virus scans, came back fine but yet no difference, i really dont want to reload windows but its starting to look that way, however if someone has some advice? that would be great!

[scaryjim]

What HDD have you got, and could the repeated uninstalling and reinstalling have hammered it hard enough for it to give out?

Do you have a power profile set that's sticking your CPU in its lowest power (and therefore slowest) state?

Is a program or antivirus you have installed hogging your CPU or RAM?

At least give us something to go on!

[Jasp]

Make sure you have ran the WMI test, control panel>performance & tools>test

[razer121]

sorry i should have mentioned! heres a quick rundown of the spec,

500gb samsung f1 hdd
4gb memory
msi mobo
core i5 (stock speed)
750watt psu corsair tx or tk i cannot remember

so theres teh basic run down of the pc...now unless the msi board has something set in the bios (which i cannot see) there is no program i have installed that should try and control the cpu at all...avast is not using hardly any power at all if anything explorer use's the most at at 25,556k and of course when i use firfox which hits 99,899 easily every time lol erm the hadd was pretty new not even six months old yet! surely formating it couldnt have caused this?

[razer121]

Make sure you have ran the WMI test, control panel>performance & tools>test

everything is above 7 but the hdd is 5.9

[scaryjim]

If you've got Speedstep enabled the windows power management might be clocking your CPU down, but if your WMI is up in the 7s for CPU it doesn't sound likely.

Possibly Avast is running an on access scan every time you look at a new photo, and that's slowing it down?

I only mentioned the hard drive because all of the older computers at work are dying horribly with HD problems, and all of them have manifested by grinding to a halt in a relatively short space of time before finally dying competely. Repeatedly reinstalling your operating system will take more of a toll on the disk then normal usage, but it shouldn't be enough to kill a 6 month old hard drive, really.

I'd say you need to run system monitor for a lengthy period and make sure you've selected "view processes from all users" or whatever it's called in Windows 7 - there must be *something* causing the slow down and that's the only way you're likely to identify it.

[Zak33]

did you install the proper drivers for the motherboard, and not just rely upon the Microsoft ones?

[this_is_gav]

I'd get the hard drive backed up first, then explore the avenue that it's on its way out.

When the machine is on a go-slow, is the hard drive activity LED on at all? Flicking on and off? Flicking in a consistent pattern? Constantly on?

[fuddam]

excuse me for asking, but this is a legit version of windows, right?

saw a blog on ZDnet this week where someone was complaining about how crappy Win 7 is in terms of security, and it turned out he had a bootleg copy

if not, no offense intended.

[Splash]

If you run

net use

from a command prompt do you have anything mapped to inaccessible/no longer existing network locations?

[razer121]

wow lots for me to do today then! ive already got everything backed up. i keep all my docs and such on my external its just my games/programs that are kept on my C drive, tryed to optimise the pc for gaming as thats its genral use!

no this is a legit copy of windows - cracking windows is not for me

its still pretty early ive got a shelf to build so i will try anything and everythin i can a little later and come back with my results...thanks again!

[shaithis]

If you have installed Windows 7 5 times due to viri, can I suggest loading it from clean an 8th time and then to stop downloading warez?

[badass]

If you have installed Windows 7 5 times due to viri, can I suggest loading it from clean an 8th time and then to stop downloading warez?

Exactily.

[Ben Rogers]

I would use Boot n Nuke to properly wipe the hard drive as it sounds like traces of Viruses are being left over from previous installs.

I do not know of software that can competely wipe the hard drive that nobody can recover but the above suggestion is as good as it gets, as far as I am aware.

Failing that, check the CPU isn't overheating as obviously if it is throttling back it will run so much slower than normal, but it probably is more down to Viruses lingering than anything else.

Good luck.

[razer121]

i dont have any idea what warez is lol im guessing you just mean illegal stuff? if thats the case then the most illegal things i download are no-cds cracks? dont really think thats a problem if i have bought game however, there is other little bits and bobs i download, like drivers/programs (the free ones) most of them are from respectafull sites! some sites ive never heard of but anyway back to my reports of how things have been...i tryed anouther full scan from avast, i think im going to tell it to do a boot scan next,

ive not tryed the net use option, i will admit that but the hdd led flicks alot when its loading files up i would exspect it to? it does it every now and then when not doing anything.

something really bugged me today, i copyed a bunch of pictures over from my pc to the external hdd, there was just under a gigs worth of pictures there. Anyway i thought i would copy them over to my laptop to see how long my laptop took, well here it is...

the core i5 pc took just under 6 mins!
the athlon 64 x2 took about 1 min....

i mean come on! my pc is running like crap and im just going to flatten the hdd and start again, i never had ANY of these problems with windows vista. so yes im blaming it on 7 alot at the moment and very much starting to get ticked with it.

[razer121]

If you run

net use

from a command prompt do you have anything mapped to inaccessible/no longer existing network locations?

when i run this it says "there are no entries in the list"