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My blazing fast desktop slowed down suddenly today

R

radhak

Senior member
My desktop is on Win 7, an i7 with 16GB ram and SSD boot drive. It has been blazing fast, till this morning, when it slowed down dramatically. It takes ages (3 to 5 minutes) to open any program or a browser after a double-click, and then takes many ages to connect to any website (and times out at many).

It's the same even after switching users.

I do have an AV (BitDefender), and when I did a scan by PCPitstop and it gave some very minor errors (like HDD not fragmented, etc) that should not cause this big a slowdown.

But when I did a safe-boot-with-networking, it's back to as fast as ever, without any issues. That narrows it down some, I think.

So how do I go about finding out what's wrong?
 
Did you install anything new recently? try to remove that..

Or, try running a System Restore.

I would also run a RAM and HD diagnostic.
 
Why cant you use Windows' built in "Performance Application" (Management Console) to monitor what the resources are doing (eg, HDD, CPU, RAM Utilization, etc.)?
 
It's working now - but I don't still know what went wrong.

By observing and comparing with the safe-mode boot, using msconfig, I have disabled most services and startup programs; actually all of the non-Microsoft ones. Now that it's working, I gotta go enable each disabled service and verify which caused the problem.

While I said no new program was installed recently, I had not realized how many existing programs auto-update. Any of them could be a problem if they had updated today. I'll be shutting all auto updates for some time now. I don't think I'll care if I have an earlier version of Firefox or iTunes etc.

But I have a gut feeling the culprit is the free version of BitDefender. I'll replace it with something else, just for my peace of mind.

And of course, I have to confess that I did not have any Restore point saved. I should have done that last week when everything was running smooth.
 
I recently had to return BitDefender (for 3 pcs) for a refund because it made both of my computers which had windows 7 and windows xp run slowly. There was no problem getting a refund so maybe other people have experienced the same if they have BitDefender.
 
From your symptoms, it sounds like something got in. I would boot into Safe Mode and delete all Temporary Files. Anything you don't recognize should go.
For most programs, if it needs a folder in User\Temp\ it will recreate it. I would then run a scan with another AV than what you have installed and also one with Malwarebytes ... see what (hopefully nothing) turns up. Another idea, is maybe your AV is doing a Boot Scan .. that will slow the boot up time.

If you want a free antivirus, try Avast .. I run it and so do many others.
 
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