Thanks for the advice. I tried all of these, ran ccleaner too and defrag, etc, still the same. Sometimes it runs normal-ish speed, sometimes deadly slow.
My main reason for thinking it might be the harddrive is this. When I first bought the PC it had two 160GB internal harddrives (C: and ). Then about a year ago the PC was seriously slow, I tried to reinstall Vista and it took something like 10 hours. So I took out the C: harddrive and put the other one in it's place (the one which was almost completely empty). Vista then installed in about 45min-1hour and the PC was fine up until now.
It's not quite as crazily slow as last time but I'm thinking it's slow for the same reasons maybe? I just wanted to see if there's any test I can run to make sure before going through the hassle of buying another internal harddrive and reinstalling everything.
Which version of seatools did you use the cd image or the DOS floppy disc version?
you probably don't have two hard drives. just one partitioned.
No it was 2 as I physically took one out (C:) and replaced it with (D:). Once everything was reinstalled it worked at normal speed, but now the is acting slow as C: was.
i don't buy these failing hard disk ideas. they rarely if ever flounder over weeks.
My sister's PC started to get progressively slower and then Windows wanted to check the disk drive when booting.
A check with Seatools reported an error but by then it wasn't booting.
(This is the short version of the story!).
It is possible that the Seatools error will go away if the disk is completely reformatted but I'm not sure if I would really trust the drive again.
My sister's PC started to get progressively slower and then Windows wanted to check the disk drive when booting.
A check with Seatools reported an error but by then it wasn't booting.
(This is the short version of the story!).
It is possible that the Seatools error will go away if the disk is completely reformatted but I'm not sure if I would really trust the drive again.
the process rarely last for long though is what i mean. you don't get months of warning via performance, it's errors then gone.
the process rarely last for long though is what i mean. you don't get months of warning via performance, it's errors then gone.
That's the longer part of the story! My sister is miles away from me and is not at all computer literate. So quickly, or slowly it was deteriorating is not known to me.
I've had a couple of my own drives that have failed the Seatools test. Once was first errored by my Synology NAS. The other pased the Seatools test after reformatting but is it ok? I'm not so sure.
Is your computer cleaned out? Dust will build up and cause overheats which in turn makes computers run deadly slow as the CPU throttles back when it hits a certain temp. The CPU heatsink may even be coming lose somehow, or the fan failing, causing overheats.
I had a neighbor's Athlon XP based PC doing this, the temps must have been obscene, the entire back half of the computer was HOT, all the caps were bulging up and dying...mental!
Comments
Which version of seatools did you use the cd image or the DOS floppy disc version?
No it was 2 as I physically took one out (C:) and replaced it with (D:). Once everything was reinstalled it worked at normal speed, but now the
It was Seatools for windows:
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/
I just downloaded it, installed it, but when I tried to run it it came up with an error.
My sister's PC started to get progressively slower and then Windows wanted to check the disk drive when booting.
A check with Seatools reported an error but by then it wasn't booting.
(This is the short version of the story!).
It is possible that the Seatools error will go away if the disk is completely reformatted but I'm not sure if I would really trust the drive again.
the process rarely last for long though is what i mean. you don't get months of warning via performance, it's errors then gone.
That's the longer part of the story! My sister is miles away from me and is not at all computer literate. So quickly, or slowly it was deteriorating is not known to me.
I've had a couple of my own drives that have failed the Seatools test. Once was first errored by my Synology NAS. The other pased the Seatools test after reformatting but is it ok? I'm not so sure.
Try the DOS version.
I am not sure that you have a failing drive either but just to eliminate it from the process it is worth running.
I had a neighbor's Athlon XP based PC doing this, the temps must have been obscene, the entire back half of the computer was HOT, all the caps were bulging up and dying...mental!