What's wrong with my computer (again)?

[rfisher]

Yay - another wassup wiv me 'puter thread.

Intel i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz.

4GB RAM

64-bit Win10 OS

320GB ST320LT007-9ZV142 HDD

Very slow to do anything, HDD access at 100% (suspect that this is Windows fault as the drive shows no problems).

Only used to run CCTV monitoring programme, which works fine.

But if I try to do anything with it I'm there for ages waiting for a response.

[Digger]

Ctrl - Alt - Delete

Task Manager

Processes Tab & see what is hogging the CPU usage

Do you do any web browsing at all with it?

[mw88]

Sounds like a dying hard drive to me.

Hard drive should have SMART monitoring which will tell you how many errors it's had and how likely it is to die.

[V8covin]

Windows updates makes my pc grind to a halt.
Check that's not ongoing

[mmm-five]

How full is the HD?

Do you run any aftermarket antivirus/security software?

[QJumper]

Also worth checking the fans aren't clogged up, as overheating will slow down a pc.

[paulrockliffe]

rfisher said:

4GB RAM
Win10
HDD

These three are not a happy combo. W10 wants 8Gb of RAM and not having an SSD is making that issue worse.

It's a cheap fix though.

[rfisher]

Just had another look at it and the cpu is only running at 0.85 GHz.

HDD intermittently running at 100%.

I'll get a screengrab of the stats to post up later.

Fecking annoying when they do this.

[imck]

paulrockliffe said:

rfisher said:

4GB RAM
Win10
HDD

These three are not a happy combo. W10 wants 8Gb of RAM and not having an SSD is making that issue worse.

It's a cheap fix though.

Agree.
Old Lenovo Laptop with the same i5 Processor, 4GB RAM and Mechanical HDD.
Dreadfully slow.

8GB and SSD
Fairly snappy

[M4cruiser]

Mine does this from time to time, usually is an update downloading (like others have said) either Windows or the virus checker.

Give it a couple of hours and a re-boot, all will be well .... until the next update.

[Road2Ruin]

M4cruiser said:

Mine does this from time to time, usually is an update downloading (like others have said) either Windows or the virus checker.

Give it a couple of hours and a re-boot, all will be well .... until the next update.

Probably this. Get it all the time across the dozen or so work computers I have to sort out.

[xeny]

rfisher said:

Just had another look at it and the cpu is only running at 0.85 GHz.

HDD intermittently running at 100%.

I'll get a screengrab of the stats to post up later.

Fecking annoying when they do this.

It won’t bother running faster when it is spending time waiting on the HD. Either add RAM/SSD (ideally both), or you’ll get a slight improvement changing to 32 bit Windows as it uses a little less memory.

[eeLee]

It really sounds like the HDD is failing, classic sign of trying and failing to read/write data would be the pinning of the disk usage at 100%. I assume this happens with few tasks (applications) running?

Do you have another drive to put in and do a fresh install of Windows to test the rest of the hardware?

I have a tool called Spinrite that I run on all of my disks but it's $90 and you may not want to invest in that for this as a replacement drive might be cheaper.

[Jinx]

Crystal Disk Info

Free and a quick check (well depending on how slow your machine is running today) of the state of your HDD.

[rfisher]

Thanks for the replies.

I've downloaded the HDD checker as posted above and ordered a new 4Gb SIMM to get 8Gb memory.

Will report back as it's helpful to complete a thread.

[geeks]

Swap the HDD to an SSD once you have the additional RAM in there and it be like a brand new machine

[rfisher]

geeks said:

Swap the HDD to an SSD once you have the additional RAM in there and it be like a brand new machine

Will probably do that as well.

Crystal Disk Info reports that the HDD is 'good'.

Spins at 7200 rpm which I didn't know.

I reckon Win10 is swapping to disk due to low memory.

[geeks]

Still worth running up Task Manager and seeing what is kicking the crap out of the system in general as well. RAM will help but it wont resolve what could be a.n.other underlying issue of course.

[dundarach]

I've a 14 year old HP 6930p with an SSD and 4gb of ram runs Win10 okay including office.

Make sure you've not got loads and loads of things starting up automatically please!!

Then check stupid antivirus if you have one.

[mike9009]

Daft question but is the HDD full with CCTV footage?? This might be the issue.