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Peculiar slow-down issue

S

Slander

Junior Member
Ok I apologize in advance but this is a sort of problem I have difficulty putting into words but I'll do my best.
Easiest way I can say it is that whenever my CPU is under any kind of load there is a seemingly random chance for the current program that is in 'focus' to hang, or become unresponsive for anywhere to five seconds to ten minutes. When the CPU is idling there is no issue, also when this occurs my HD appears to be idling as well. The frequency and length of the slows downs increase with more programs that are open. It also occurs much more often if I try copying or installing anything, which can often lead to a 100 MB file taking 10 friggin minutes to copy. This problem started happening a few weeks ago. First thing I did (and tried again last night) was to format the partition that has Windows on it which was unsuccessful. Next I tried running memtest to see if I could find any memory problems, and none were found after 3 cycles. After that I disassembled my computer and cleaned all the dust out, which also didn't work (though it needed it). Another interesting thing about my issue is that I can run movies of the highest quality with no issue if it is the only thing open, but the moment I try to do anything semi-'aggressive' my computer grinds to a halt along with all video stopping (audio continues) until my pc snaps out of it. And then sometimes it can go a few minutes without having any issues whatsoever (working just like it did when I first put it together). So yeah..
Any suggestions on how I might be able to further narrow down what is causing this issue would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately I don't really have any parts I can swap out to do trial and error.

I thought I would try here because I remember coming here like eight years or so ago and reading the reviews, and I remember this place having a help forum... 😛
 
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There are a few different things that come to my mind here. Do you ever get a blue screen?

One thing I am thinking is hard drive.
1. The first/easiest thing to do is to replace the hard drive SATA cable.
2. Another easy thing would be to check you hard drive in device manager and make sure there is no yellow exclamation point beside the drive, and make sure write caching is enabled.
3. If still no luck, I would start checking the health of the drive. Seagate makes a great tool for this, available here: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-dos-master/
Just burn it to a CD and boot off it.

Let us know how it goes.
 
I was starting to think HD too... I swapped my dvd drive and hd cable but it didn't work. I'll try running the seagate tool and get back with my system specs if that doesn't find anything.
 
I built it about six years ago. It has a Western Digital 500GB SATA HD. The Seagate tool's quick test failed immediatly, while the long test showed one error but was unable to attempt any repair because I don't have a seagate drive. It appears to be a bad sector...
Defrag runs once a week and as I said in my first post I've formatted twice the past month, so a disk cleanup shouldn't be necessary.
 
Slander said:
I built it about six years ago. It has a Western Digital 500GB SATA HD. The Seagate tool's quick test failed immediatly, while the long test showed one error but was unable to attempt any repair because I don't have a seagate drive. It appears to be a bad sector...
Defrag runs once a week and as I said in my first post I've formatted twice the past month, so a disk cleanup shouldn't be necessary.
Click to expand...

If you have a bad sector, then it's probably time for a new hard drive. You could run a full scandisk (check for bad sectors) and it could mark it, but usually once they start, it is only a matter of time before more crop up.
 
Well I guess that's probably the best news I could have gotten, since Hard drives are pretty cheap... still it'll be a couple weeks before I can afford one. I ran windows chkdsk and it says it repaired 4k in bad sectors.. which cut down the occurrence of the slow downs.
Is it safe to continue using my computer for another week or two? I can only imagine how long it's going to take me to back up 350gb with these slow downs... could be quite a few days.
 
Slander said:
Well I guess that's probably the best news I could have gotten, since Hard drives are pretty cheap... still it'll be a couple weeks before I can afford one. I ran windows chkdsk and it says it repaired 4k in bad sectors.. which cut down the occurrence of the slow downs.
Is it safe to continue using my computer for another week or two? I can only imagine how long it's going to take me to back up 350gb with these slow downs... could be quite a few days.
Click to expand...

Well, this will be a good opportunity for you to back up, which you should have been doing all along, lol. Seriously though, it is hard to say, as it depends on how much time passes between when the original sectors went bad, and when the next ones start going. The good news is that there is nothing yet wrong with the mechanics of the drive (the power system or the mechanical arm) so at least you have a chance to back up your data. Many are not so lucky.

I won't say I have seen a ton of drives go bad this way, but the ones I have always gradually built more and more bad sectors, which would be great in your case as you save up for the new drive.

If you don't subscribe to the Newegg Exclusive Deals emails, I would suggest doing so. Right now the 1 TB is around $70, but if you time it right you can probably find better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148840
 
I am with ketchup. Back up anything important NOW!! Bad sectors almost always multiply and you could be one use away from having your drive be unuseable and the data be unrecoverable.
 
wow thanks ketchup.. that's really helpful. hopefully that promo code will last a week or so.. i just lost my insurance a couple months ago and had to pay out the ass to see a doctor last week for an emergency, it might be a minute before I can get a new hd, but it's refreshing to see how inexpensive they are these days, i really did luck out with that being my only issue after having my computer for six years
 
Slander said:
i just lost my insurance a couple months ago and had to pay out the ass to see a doctor last week for an emergency,
Click to expand...

Man that stinks. I hope you get some insurance soon. I had some surgery last year (I wouldn't say it was at the emergency level) that my insurance company paid about a half million dollars for. I had to pay a decent amount, but nowhere near that!
 
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