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PC Dying? Virus?
MightyUnclean
Member EpicPosts: 3,531
in Hardware
Over the last few days, my 3.5-year-old PC has been acting oddly. I get these spikes where programs (Chrome, games, etc.) take up to 30 seconds to open after I double-click their icons. The same thing happens when I try to open the Task Manager or Control Panel (Windows 7). Other times, everything seems fine. Could memory or the HD (sigh I know, I need a SSD) be going bad? Could I have a virus? I've run scans with Malwarebytes and AVG and they've come up totally clean.
Thanks for any help!
Comments
I would second the motion to reformat a 3.5yr old installation.
Backup your files, and pre-download your drivers from their respective mfgs.
Edit: I'm assuming here that your OS install is just as old as the pc (which was never specified).
Right click on the task bar an start Task Manager > Processes tab > select CPU column header and order the items listed in order of most usage. Keep it running on the desktop.
When your system slows look at the order and see what is taking up all the CPU time. Give us a list of the top ten processes that are using CPU time
Reformat and re-install is an easy and lazy answer that causes a lot of work and should be a last resort. Try to find out what is causing the issue. Companies will do it because they have created images of the OS and apps that takes a tech 15 minutes. Someone at home will take hours if they haven't prepared for it.
The OP is probably correct about it being a hard-drive related issue. The key point is that it hangs when attempting to open a new program. The likely culprit is the drive itself, but the SATA cable or motherboard could be the cause of the issue.
It is fairly easy to replace a SATA cable, so try that first. If you don't have an extra one, make sure yours is plugged in all the way. You can test your hard drive for issues with a SMART status monitor. Download one for free and see if your drive reports issues. There isn't much you can do to test your motherboard. Try moving the SATA cable to a new port, as far away as possible from the one it is in.
3.5 year installation reformat is not lazy its even smart to do a clean install.
I myself do a clean install every 6 months and im not lazy or seek easy way out:D
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
When is the last time you have defragged?
I can also say that a studdering computer can also be a symptom of a dying hard drive. I am not saying go out and buy a new computer now, or even a new hard drive, but I am saying keep your eyes open for other weird things - and it wouldn't hurt to check the SMART status on the hard drive (although that is notoriously poor at actually predicting failures) - something like hdtune, some BIOSes show it as well.
A full wipe may take a few hours to recover from, but when the other option is days of hit & miss troubleshooting, sometimes it's the lesser of two evils. And if it still doesn't work after a good reformat and reinstall, you can be reasonably confident at that point that something is up with your hardware.
I will say, since WinXP SP2 or so, a full wipe/reinstall isn't nearly as necessary as it used to be (before that, it was nearly mandatory). I have some Windows installations that are years old and still perform very well, as opposed to the Win98 days when just by virtue of sitting there Windows would creep to a crawl. But if you do a lot of software installs/uninstalls, juggle a lot of hardware, get hit with a virus/malware, or "obtain" software for free, it can still be a good idea to just start with a clean slate.
Their answer was lazy, not the work it entails.
I'd suspect hard drive issues, but it could be anything from the drive failing to issues with a SATA port and/or cable to being badly fragmented to being almost completely full to massive paging to disk because you need more system memory. Fortunately, the last two of those are easy to check: if you're using more memory than you have, that's your problem. If your hard drive is 99% full, that's your problem. Checking fragmentation isn't that much harder: defragment your drive and then it won't be fragmented anymore.
Due to the potential for a hard drive failure, I'd back up any data that you care about immediately before searching for other issues.