PC slow when creating folders, displaying file open/save dialog

Question

I've noticed my trusty Windows 7 PC seems to be getting sluggish, but in quite specific ways only. When I am using a specific program it is responsive and works fine. But more and more frequently, doing anything related to Windows Explorer leads to stalls of anywhere from 5-30 seconds. For instance creating a new folder, saving/opening a file (from any program that uses the standard Open/Save dialog).

Maybe or maybe not related, Google Chrome will sometimes just stall for a similar length of time and the active tab will suddenly become detached as a full-screen window, as if I have dragged it into a separate window, before going back to normal and working smoothly again.

During these stalls I am aware of the hard disk chugging away. So I'm wondering if disk I/O is the cause of my issues. But even if it is I have no idea if that suggests a problem with the disk itself, or with my Windows installation, or my swapfile, etc. I have not changed any system settings, and this is a problem which has slowly been getting worse over time. I frequently run my PC for weeks without a full shut-down, preferring hibernate, but doing a full reboot doesn't appear to make any difference. I wondered if good old defrag might help but is that really still needed in W7?

If it suggests a disk failure I have been considering cloning my spinny disk to an SSD for a while anyway, would that be sensible?

Answer 1

My best guess is that your harddrive is almost full, about to fail or becomming very fragmented. My suggestions for how to try and fix this situation would be:

NOTE: Back up all important data before running a defragmentation or running CheckDisk. If your drive is about to fail, you may do irreversible damage to it with these tools. This is a "worst case scenario", but I would always back up crucial data before starting a "rescue operation".

1. How much free space is on your drive?

If your drive is almost full, and you are using a dynamically sized swap file, this might be the cause of your problem.

How to determine if your swap drive is dynamically sized: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-virtual-memory-size#1TC=windows-7

I would recommend against dynamic sized swap file. I usually set the swap file to a fixed size (i.e. having minimum and maximum size set to the same, usually same amount as your RAM).

2. Check if defragmentation is required

See this article for a more thorough explanation: Unfortunately I cant post more than 2 links, so do a google search for "when to defragment windows 7" if you need to run this step ;)

Please read my point 4. below before defragmenting

Note: do not defragment if you're running on a SSD. This may cause more harm than good!

3. Run checkdisk to see if there are any errors on your hard drive.

See this article for instructions on how to run CheckDisk: Unfortunately I cant post more than 2 links, so do a google search for "Check your hard disk for errors in Windows 7" if you need to run this step ;)

4. Replace hard drive

If neither of these seem like they are the issue, your hard drive may be about to fail. In this case, you should consider replacing your hard drive. In this case make sure you know what you're doing before you start. See this article for detailed instructions: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2086644/how-to-upgrade-to-a-larger-hard-drive.html

Good luck!

Answer 2

I can confirm that this is 99% a hard drive that is getting old. It doesn't mean that you will have a failure, they can last long after they become sluggish, but you definitely risk loosing data. Defrag will probably not make it better, no. Yes. An SSD sounds like a good choice!

Answer 3

If the computer slows down only with Explorer, there may be software extended the context menu malfunctioning. Check if you have such tools installed and try to deactivate/uninstall them.