Evil Computer! (Very slow)

[Nevin]

Can someone help me fix my slow computer? It tends to slow down 10x its normal speed. Maybe even 100x the normal speed (Im not exaggerating it to). Turning on the computer and logging in is always perfectly fine. Takes the PC about 24 seconds from boot to desktop. Everything seems to run fine but the very moment I open a program the computer becomes HORRIBLY slow. It takes about 30 seconds for a program such as Google Chrome to open a window and about 5 minutes of a blank window with nothing in it before I see the "Google" homepage. Other program will do this to.
Now this doesn't happen all the time; But it happens to me about every day out of the week. It takes my computer about 2 - 3 hours of just sitting and doing absolutely nothing before the slowness goes away and its back to its normal self.
Also the slowness occurs more frequently if I close a program out, such as a game or a web browser. When I exit a program everything sometimes becomes 100x slow and never responds to its normal speed.
When the PC is slow the amber light is on solid light. Ive checked in task manager to see what program is eating up the memory, but everything in it is doing perfectly fine. 11% CPU Usage and 38% Physical Memory Usage.
Ive checked PC temperatures. 35c ~ cpu; 45c ~ gpu; 45c ~ hd
Checked to see if the motherboard wasn't damaged and the hardware cleaned of dust. Bought a new power supply since the one HP had built into my computer had no head room and my computer was freezing/crashing/restarting due to low power.
Re-installed Vista home 32 bit, Cleaned and fixed registry, Full Virus Scans with different programs, Used memtest on ram, Diagnostics scan , Defragmented hd, disconnected and reconnected hardware, re-applied thermal paste to cpu, test for power failures or power loss.... Ive exhausted everything I know to fix or tune up a slow computer >.> Help!?

Vista Home 32x; E7600 CPU; 3GB RAM; 500GB HD; IPIBL-LB (Benicia) Mobo; GTS 250 GPU; 500w CX 500 Corsair PSU

 

[Reefsmoka]

Have you tried a fresh install? Back up what you want to keep to disc's/an other hard-drive then format and install the operating system fresh. If its still slow then its going to be your hard drive thats dying.

 

[muckshifter]

I'd be looking at the CPU ... it may be failing, or, as it's an Intel, may be throttled, or fan not working as intended. If the fan stops the CPU will go on a go slow to protect itself.

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-028855.htm


Welcome to PCReview

 

[Nevin]

Have you tried a fresh install? Back up what you want to keep to disc's/an other hard-drive then format and install the operating system fresh. If its still slow then its going to be your hard drive thats dying.

Yes I've done that. Im getting a feeling it could be the hard drive, but also a number of other things as well that have problems I don't know about or haven't showed up as damaged on the diagnostics scan test.

 

[Nevin]

I'd be looking at the CPU ... it may be failing, or, as it's an Intel, may be throttled, or fan not working as intended. If the fan stops the CPU will go on a go slow to protect itself.

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/CS-028855.htm


Welcome to PCReview

The temperatures for it stay at 35c.
Could the fan possibly be going out for a brief moment and then switching back on and the CPU isn't fully recovered from slowing its self down? Or could the CPU be slowing itself down, even though its temperatures are perfectly fine; Faulty Thermal Monitoring detection?

 

[Stoneboysteve]

Nevin,

Try Process Explorer, it is a free download and will show you the applications running processes.
wuaudt.exe is the Windows Update process. It has known issues combined with the associated svchost process. They bottleneck systems. Google wuaudt if you see the process hogging resources.

Additionally, if you have a thumb drive you can use Ready Boost. Ready Boost is a caching and page file feature in Vista and above. Provision a gig or two for ready boost, your system will use your thumb drive to improve the RAM performance.

Stoneboysteve

 

[Nevin]

Nevin,

Try Process Explorer, it is a free download and will show you the applications running processes.
wuaudt.exe is the Windows Update process. It has known issues combined with the associated svchost process. They bottleneck systems. Google wuaudt if you see the process hogging resources.

Additionally, if you have a thumb drive you can use Ready Boost. Ready Boost is a caching and page file feature in Vista and above. Provision a gig or two for ready boost, your system will use your thumb drive to improve the RAM performance.

Stoneboysteve

Sure, I'll try both out. I will post back if I notice a difference; Now to wait for the slows to return and try this out.

Edit: Here's a pic of process explorer under normal load

 

[jadhav.swapnil95]

Can someone help me fix my slow computer? It tends to slow down 10x its normal speed. Maybe even 100x the normal speed (Im not exaggerating it to). Turning on the computer and logging in is always perfectly fine. Takes the PC about 24 seconds from boot to desktop. Everything seems to run fine but the very moment I open a program the computer becomes HORRIBLY slow. It takes about 30 seconds for a program such as Google Chrome to open a window and about 5 minutes of a blank window with nothing in it before I see the "Google" homepage. Other program will do this to.
Now this doesn't happen all the time; But it happens to me about every day out of the week. It takes my computer about 2 - 3 hours of just sitting and doing absolutely nothing before the slowness goes away and its back to its normal self.
Also the slowness occurs more frequently if I close a program out, such as a game or a web browser. When I exit a program everything sometimes becomes 100x slow and never responds to its normal speed.
When the PC is slow the amber light is on solid light. Ive checked in task manager to see what program is eating up the memory, but everything in it is doing perfectly fine. 11% CPU Usage and 38% Physical Memory Usage.
Ive checked PC temperatures. 35c ~ cpu; 45c ~ gpu; 45c ~ hd
Checked to see if the motherboard wasn't damaged and the hardware cleaned of dust. Bought a new power supply since the one HP had built into my computer had no head room and my computer was freezing/crashing/restarting due to low power.
Re-installed Vista home 32 bit, Cleaned and fixed registry, Full Virus Scans with different programs, Used memtest on ram, Diagnostics scan , Defragmented hd, disconnected and reconnected hardware, re-applied thermal paste to cpu, test for power failures or power loss.... Ive exhausted everything I know to fix or tune up a slow computer >.> Help!?

Vista Home 32x; E7600 CPU; 3GB RAM; 500GB HD; IPIBL-LB (Benicia) Mobo; GTS 250 GPU; 500w CX 500 Corsair PSU

Hi,

i also have this type of problem anyone know how to resolve this problem?

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

Core Temp also has a logging feature, allowing a user to easily record the temperature of his processor(s) over any period of time, then the data can be easily transferred into an excel datasheet for easy graphing.

If you use the above tool with the logging feature enabled you will definitly be able to tell if the cpu is being throttled.

 

[Stoneboysteve]

A little update, the machine that started my process of increasing speed was upgraded with 2GB ram and the slowness decreased.

We are still using 1 GB on ReadyBoost to help with page files. You can allocate this space on the hard drive as well but the flash memory is faster.

Good luck,

Stoneboysteve

 

[Nevin]

A little update, the machine that started my process of increasing speed was upgraded with 2GB ram and the slowness decreased.

We are still using 1 GB on ReadyBoost to help with page files. You can allocate this space on the hard drive as well but the flash memory is faster.

Good luck,

Stoneboysteve

Its 8GB's and it uses 4090MB's of the flash memory portion of the drive for ready-boost. So far I guess that it has been working. Ive noticed my computer tries to slow down at random but it only lasts for about a minute or two before it gives up and everything is back to normal. It is much better then having to wait 3 hours. Im still waiting to take a screenshot of process explorer when the computer does decide to slow way down.

 

[Stoneboysteve]

I was looking at the machine we had trouble with. Since the thumb drive success we upgraded to 4GB RAM and have noticed very high performance that does not seem to have any issues. I still have 1GB dedicated on Ready Boost as it handles caching and page files.

I hope you work out your issue, nothing sucks more than a slow computer.

Stoneboysteve