My laptop is suddenly EXTREMELY slow.

Question

My laptop is suddenly EXTREMELY slow.

Anonymous

As in, even trying to type something in the start bar takes several minutes.

I'm able to start Windows but it takes like 15 minutes to even get past the Windows logo. It's like everything is in slow motion.

But task manager says the usage is at 0% or 1%. No programs are open.

Trying to open folders, right-click on anything, or even move a folder results in the whole screen turning lighter (like a window does when it crashes) and says "Windows Explorer is not responding."

I've tried restarting and it says "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause." and recommends Launch Startup Repair. The first time I was able to launch startup repair, but it didn't seem to solve anything. Now it won't even launch startup repair, attempting to do so brings me to a new screen that says "Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer." I don't have anything connected.

This apparently started when I uninstalled an old version of Gimp and downloaded paint.net. (But I didn't run the installer. The slowness started even before the download finished.) But it was fine yesterday.

I tried to open safe mode so I could run Malwarebytes but I can't open safe mode. Pressing F8 just makes it scream this high-pitched beep noise and takes me to the "Windows failed to start" screen.

No clue what to do now. Help?

edit: Okay, this time when I tried to start Windows it brought me to a new screen: "Checking file system on C: one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency" It's still at 1%

edit2: Five hours later, it's still at 1%. It says "File segment record 41579" is unreadable" and says the same thing for every segment record number as far back as it's letting me see (which is 41559 but probably the ones before that are unreadable too) It's taking about 20 seconds to scan each file, and it says "of 225792" so if it continues at this rate the scan would take 42 days! What do I do??

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3 answers

Answer 1

Hi,

Welcome to Microsoft community and thank you for posting your query.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you. Let me help you to fix the issue.

To assist you better, please provide us more information.

Which anti-virus program are you using?
What is the make and model of the computer?

The issue you are facing could be due to the system is infected. Let’s try simple troubleshooting steps and check if this helps in resolving the issue. Follow the below methods.

Method 1.

If a computer is infected by a virus, lots of resources will be taken up to greatly slow down computer performance. I suggest you to run virus scan (Microsoft Safety Scanner) and check if it helps to resolve the issue.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx

Note: Any data files that are infected may only be cleaned by deleting the file entirely, which means there is a potential for data loss.

If the issue still persist, try the below method.

Method 2.

I suggest you to boot the system in clean boot state and check if the issue still persist. Clean boot process will help you determine which third party program/app that is causing this issue. It could be some other application or programs, which runs on the computer at the background, leading to this issue. Please visit the below link on how to perform Clean boot.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135

Disclaimer: Please go through the section: How to reset the computer to start as usual after troubleshooting with clean boot of the Kb article to boot the computer in normal startup after fixing the issue.

Hope this helps. Keep posting us with the status we will be glad to help to you.

Answer 2

Hi,

Thank you for coming back to us with the current status.

To assist you better, I would like to know when you turn on the system can you hear the hard drive is running? Do you hear any sound?

If you can hear the sound hard drive is running, I would suggest you to perform automatic repair using media creation tool and check.

Download and create Windows 10 media creation tool from the below link using other system.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Once you complete creating media. Insert the Windows installation DVD in the DVD ROM and restart your computer.

After you boot the computer using Windows DVD, a black screen appears with gray text "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD". Press any key.
Select the correct time and Keyboard type.
Click on Repair your computer in the lower left corner.
Select Troubleshoot from Choose an option screen.
Click Advanced options in Troubleshoot screen.
Click Automatic Repair from Advanced Options screen.
Next, choose the operating system by clicking on its button.
Windows will look for problems on hard drives and verify that all required files are intact.

Hope it helps. Keep posting us with the status we will be glad to help you

Answer 3

A lot has happened since I posted the original message, now I'm pretty sure the hard drive is dead. When the scan finally finished (took about 20 hours) I was able to restart the computer and after a couple hours it went back to normal speed. I thought it was fixed but then it restarted itself and said "Hard drive not exist"

Pictures of the scan:

http://imgur.com/a/FRq24

Pictures after the hard drive died:

http://imgur.com/a/8oN3M

So is the problem a bad hard drive? Should I order a new one or try to repair this one?

I have a backup ("system image") saved on an external drive from a few months ago, so I'm not really worried about data loss, but I'd rather not lose the OS altogether if I can avoid it, because I don't think I have the Windows 7 disks.

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My laptop is suddenly EXTREMELY slow.

3 answers