Running SLOW. Hard drive issue?

[montypythizzle]

My computer has been running REALLY slow lately, well over past 4-5 months. I think it is just the ole' get slow over time disease but, I really don't want to reformat. My computer is halfway decent.

X2 3600 at 2.4, 4GB (3.5 on XP), and a SATA 8MB cache drive. I think it is the harddrive as it is always blinking on and off once in a while while just typing this for instance. Loading screens on WoW make my music skip a beat when really doing some hardcore loading. I defragmented and it seems to never give me Smart errors on the BIOS screen. Its a WD 1200JD FWIW.

Any tips on what I can do to speed it up while backing up the last files? Or any programs/files I can view to see what is slowing me down?

 

[DanTMWTMP]

Kill all the startup options? Some of my usb devices slow down my computer (my iphone, or my ps3 webcam with some shoddy drivers for instance).

It can be a myriad of things that contribute to it.

Try doing the usual ccleaner/spybot/defraggler clean-up while in safemode. Kill any unnecessary startup processes (like those useless printer ones).

Post a screenshot of your services and processes from the task manager, and post it here.

 

[montypythizzle]

Well, most of the services are pertinent to what I have running have 8 things on my tray, 1 ofc is windows update which is always downloading something heh, and only like 47 processes, which I said were pertinent to what I had running. The major processes are things I have running, most of the others are 1k etc. Going to try and run some virus scans/adware stuff tonight while I am at work.

 

[Gunbuster]

Test the drive with HD Tune.

 

[Gunbuster]

also try http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml for your skipping audio.