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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?
Thanks. I can confirm my disk is only about 50% full. The W7 error-checker found no errors and apparently I had a scheduled defrag task running once a week... it most recently ran only a few days ago and reports 0% defragmentation. So you still reckon the disk is just wearing out, maybe cloning to a replacement would be best? – Mr. Boy – 2014-10-16T08:30:29.367
1At this point, after reading your reply. This would be my best bet. Although that's not what we were hoping for. – Kristian – 2014-10-16T09:43:36.097