Extremely slow computer... not sure what to do next

3

A little over four years ago I built a PC with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 and 4GB of DDR2 800 ram. Not very good by today's standards, but it has served its purpose well.

Recently (within the last two to three weeks) I've been experiencing very strange issues. Most noticeably Chrome tabs crashing on every single page load. Being the new year I decided that a fresh install of Windows (7 x64 Professional) couldn't hurt. I went ahead and reinstalled and everything was going great until a few days ago.

The Chrome issues came back, and I don't remember the last time I used a computer this slow. These are actual times as recorded by a stopwatch:

  • Launching Firefox 9 with no extensions installed: 40 seconds before the GUI shows up, nevermind the homepage loading.
  • IntelliJ Idea 11: An entire minute for the splash to show up and over an additional 4 minutes 40 seconds for the actual IDE to load. Even more time before the program becomes even remotely usable.

Nothing else is running besides small programs like pidgin. My Asus Transformer is faster and more reliable.

I downloaded the latest version of Ultimate Boot CD and ran Memtest86+. No errors. Whenever I try to run any of the hard drive diagnostic tools it freezes at idle: going to resident fdapm. Googling that shows that other people have that issue as well.

The hard drive is the newest component, as the one I bought with the machine failed. I purchased the new hard drive on March 21, 2011. The hard drive is a 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Blue.

So where do I go from here? To be honest, the whole thing is making me want to get a new computer (with nice things like DDR3, Sandy Bridge, etc). I was going to sell this computer but there is no way I am selling it in its current operating condition.

knpwrs

Posted 2012-01-10T20:07:28.843

Reputation: 1 059

This sounds like it may be a problem with the hard drive itself. – Shinrai – 2012-01-10T20:17:55.880

That's what I'm thinking but I can't find any diagnostic tools that will actually run. That error message doesn't have anything to do with the hard drive. – knpwrs – 2012-01-10T20:19:52.163

Sorry for not being more detailed but I have my hands a bit full at the moment. I see the drive is relatively new but controller issues, cabling issues, power issues could cause that. The latency speaks to a failure either with the drive or an actual electrical problem (assuming there is no software cause, which seems unlikely on a clean installation). I would at a minimum check the SMART data on the drive (easily done from in Windows with any number of tools, I personally use AIDA64) – Shinrai – 2012-01-10T20:25:32.433

Answers

8

It sounds like a bad hard drive.

Check you Event Log for clues as to what may be failing.

Test the WD hard drive using WD's Diagnostic Utilities (available on their site here).

If the drive won't pass those (and it's not the computer's fault), then it's grounds for replacement, and if you purchased it in Mar. 2011, it should still be well under warranty.

If it comes up clean, then scan the file-system and disk condition with something like SpinRite, or a thorough Windows disk check (with a blank-space check: chkdsk /R).

As always, do you best to make a backup of important data before you start trying to 'repair' the drive or file-system.

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007

Posted 2012-01-10T20:07:28.843

Reputation: 103 763

I'll try that. Thankfully, I keep all of my important stuff in BitBucket and Dropbox, and all of my really important stuff in TrueCrypt in Dropbox. – knpwrs – 2012-01-10T20:26:31.107

2I'm running the diagnosis right now and the time remaining is fluctuating between 25 and 35 hours remaining. Is this a normal amount of time? – knpwrs – 2012-01-10T20:50:30.460

2For a full surface scan on a 1TB drive? It sounds a bit longer than expected, but that can be normal. – afrazier – 2012-01-10T21:05:34.457

Which 'diagnostics' are you running? The WDDiag (in DOS mode) shouldn't take any longer than a couple hours to do the 'extended' test. But, assuming WDDiag, just let it go until it finishes, it may give up after a while and just give you an error code. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-01-10T21:41:28.723

The DOS one wasn't working, so I'm running the Windows one. SMART is coming back fine but I'm currently at 13 hours 25 minutes remaining. – knpwrs – 2012-01-10T22:20:20.203

Extended test completed successfully in 19 hours, 20 minutes, and 33 seconds. I guess I'm going on to the Windows Disk Check... – knpwrs – 2012-01-11T16:54:24.567

13 hours seems REALLY long, but if you ran it in Windows then something else may have been slowing it down. Use the DOS version, and if it takes more than 4-5 hours to complete the Extended test, then the drive is broken (regardless of what the test says) and you should call WD about it. You may need to put the drive controller in 'standard' mode (no AHCI or RAID) in the BIOS before the DOS version will see the drive. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-01-11T19:08:40.463

The Windows CHKDSK just finished and didn't find anything. I disabled AHCI and I am running the extended DOS test. – knpwrs – 2012-01-11T20:10:03.047

Well, I just ran the full extended test in DOS mode. Yes, it was done that fast. The quick test ran in a few minutes and found no errors and the full media test ran in a few seconds and found no errors... safe enough to say the drive is dead? – knpwrs – 2012-01-11T20:14:52.837

The extended test should take at LEAST 20 minutes. I think you have a borked drive dude. Call WD and discuss your findings (after trying new cables, etc.) and see what they have to say. :) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-01-11T20:20:40.707

Well, I already filled in the RMA form and I'm sending it back. I also just ran DBAN using the PRNG Stream method (medium security 4 rounds, high security 8 rounds) and it finished in the blink of an eye. – knpwrs – 2012-01-11T20:34:46.783

Asked: 2012-01-10T20:07:28.843

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Active: 2012-01-18T10:26:42.720