• PC having two seperate (but maybe related?) issues:
    17 replies, posted
First off, when I leave my computer alone for a long enough time (like, say, I leave to eat dinner and then come back) my computer slows to a crawl, and I have to turn it off by using the power button because it's so slow. So when I try to scan my computer for viruses in case one may be the cause of this (which I find very likely), I come across the second problem: During scans, most of my AV (specifically Avast! and Malwarebytes, and sometimes Ad-Aware if I do a full scan instead of a quick-scan) tools freeze up while scanning the C:\Windows\Installer folder, and my computer slows to a crawl yet again, and yet again I need to use the power button to set things straight. Any help on these two fronts would be hot. And before you suggest reinstalling my OS, I don't have a disc for anything except a Win7 upgrade disc (not a full install, just an upgrade disc).
I would say a clean install would be the easyest but thats just because I don't know whats wrong(maby a lot of shit running in the background?). I have a upgrade disk here too and I do clean installs all the time. just enter the code after install.
Check the task manager processes when it slows down and say what's using up the most processing power.
Yikes. That sounds like a virus dude. I had a friend of mine who had a similar problem, and he had to take it to the Geek Squad to get it fixed.
[QUOTE=Smasher 006;26206038]Check the task manager processes when it slows down and say what's using up the most processing power.[/QUOTE] Tried. Task Manager responded too slow and oftentimes wouldn't even show up. I think I'm going to try looking for a Windows XP disc somewhere around the house, reinstall the OS using it, then upgrade to Win7 with my upgrade disc. first off, I'm going to back up some of my files (videos, music, installation files for the antivirus tools I use, etc.) onto my external hard drive.
[QUOTE=raubana;26206780]Yikes. That sounds like a virus dude. I had a friend of mine who had a similar problem, and he had to take it to the Geek Squad to get it fixed.[/QUOTE] Don't Geek Squad charge ridiculous amounts of money for really simple fixes?
Ouch, my computer just randomly slowed to a crawl without waiting for inactivity, then blue screened. moving files now so I can act ASAP.
Actually... This sounds more like a hard drive issue. (Sounds stupid, I know) When it slows down to a crawl, is the hard drive activity light going crazy? Download a program called "HDTune" and run a diagnostic S.M.A.R.T. test and post results, if your HD activity light is going nuts like I said. If it's not, then there may be a virus.
[QUOTE=SuperDuperScoot;26210938]Actually... This sounds more like a hard drive issue. (Sounds stupid, I know) When it slows down to a crawl, is the hard drive activity light going crazy? Download a program called "HDTune" and run a diagnostic S.M.A.R.T. test and post results, if your HD activity light is going nuts like I said. If it's not, then there may be a virus.[/QUOTE] Actually, that makes a tiny bit of sense. The slowdown problems DID start after I had downloaded an extremely large torrent. 80 gigs, low speed, I left the computer on for multiple days so I could get the damn thing to finish sooner. don't remember how many days, but I do think it was a while. Around a week, maybe. Let me download that thingy and run it. I'll post results soon.
See if your CPU is getting too hot. That could cause this. Does your tower have adequate ventilation? Have you dusted it recently?
[QUOTE=rosar0980;26211181]See if your CPU is getting too hot. That could cause this. Does your tower have adequate ventilation? Have you dusted it recently?[/QUOTE] that HD Tune thing SuperDuperScoot mentioned says 34 Degrees Celsius, aka 93.2 Fahrenheit. Is that too hot? also, it's a laptop. and I don't see much dust on the fans underneath, if any. EDIT: oh hey, I just figured out what that "clean install" thing raceingdemon mentioned does. I'm doing that tomorrow morning, first thing. once everything's back in order I'll go through my usual gamut of Anti-Viruses and then I'll post the results here.
I take it that's the HD's temp... I wouldn't guess that's too hot unless it was like 150 freaking degrees. But yeah, there's a thing with "sector tests" (don't remember what it's called since I haven't had the need to run HDTune for a while) Try to run that. There will be a bunch of little squares representing the sectors of your hard drive. They'll progressively turn green, one after the other as it scans, and if there's a red block, that means there's a bad sector. If there's only one or two, that's not super terrible but try to keep backups of your stuff incase it gets worse. If there's TONS of red squares... Well, there's your problem, your hard drive has been destroying itself. Edit: My info may be a bit off. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box sometimes.
you mean error test? I ran a quick one that returned all green squares, but I'll do one final in-depth one right now while I'm still planning on being awake for the next two hours it'll probably take for it to run. I'm still not sure why my hard drive would only choose to fuck up when I'm not actively using it (the random BSOD's I mentioned earlier were actually connected to a particular file that refused to be transferred to my external, but it seemed okay with being deleted. it was a music file, so no worries there anymore.).
boot it into safe mode and run scans
I had the same problem with an old laptop I had. Reformat, fixes everything. It's the only solution, what do you expect from windows? also, torrent OS, install w/ legit serial
Official results of the Error Scan from HDTune: 0.3% of the 320 GB hard drive is damaged. I don't think that's enough to fuck over my computer as badly as it's gotten, so the Clean Install will begin/continue as scheduled, tomorrow morning.
If your computer got a BSOD the error code would help a whole lot
well, I did a Clean Install of Win7 with the upgrade disc like raceingdemon originally suggested. my Antiviruses aren't freezing up anymore, so that's one problem taken care of. So now I just need to find out if the second problem is taken care of. will edit this post (unless someone else posts in the meantime) in about an hour, after dinner. EDIT: nope, no slowdowns. I guess this problem is fixed. WOOHOO! Thanks for all the help, guys!
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