# Windows suddenly really slow



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

Well, this is a really irritating problem. I started my computer up this morning, and after logging in to Windows, everything is obviously not working as it should. 

Things are sluggish right out of the gate, with my desktop taking forever to get itself together and get all the icons shown, and then even longer for Fences to kick in and organize it all. The fact that Fences works at all is strange though, as out of all the startup programs I have checked, only GeForce Experience shows up in the taskbar. Everything else, like Realtek and THXStudio are nowhere to be found and aren't even started up 30 minutes into using the computer.

To make things stranger, I have two CD Drives showing up in Computer (D and E). I checked Event Log, and there's a giant avalanche of Errors under System that are all the same, and just say "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\CdRom0."

Windows searches and opening things are awfully slow/unresponsive (er, kind of..it seems to pick up after a bit or something. I just clicked through folders in my C drive and it was instantly responsive, and Adobe Audition opened in less than 10 seconds so I don't get it). For example, my music player MediaMonkey works fine, but its not picking up my music library anymore and just says Reading files...((EDIT: after typing this it finally loaded my files, but damn it took a while). It's weird, though; things are still snappy and quick, just...not. the Windows 8 bar on the bottom is obviously having problems, like not reacting when I mouse over, icons disappearing and reappearing and no longer snapping into place..i'll just take a picture.

http://i.imgur.com/QmlFRIY.png (After I took the picture, the MediaMonkey icon is no longer in half, but the Adobe Audition one is. The event viewer icon disappeared entirely when I moved the mouse over it, but it comes back sometimes). 

I can skip through my songs really fast without adverse effects (which usually kills me if I'm defragging or something) so I don't think its the hard drive. I even booted up Bad Company 2, and it ran smoothly from the few minutes I played (apart from a split second black screen, idk where that came from but it wasn't normal).

I already did a System Restore to no avail, and chkdsk reported no problems. This might be unrelated, but I believe the night before this happened, Chrome was blocked from accessing my graphics driver after the entire GPU driver crashed (which it tends to do when browsing the net, I think its a problem with the 320.49 NVIDIA drivers) and I had to force shut down because it was taking forever on "Shutting down", though it might've gone through if I'd given it more time, seeing as now when it shuts down it takes ages, but does work eventually. What gives?


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

UPDATE: After leaving my computer on overnight, all programs that were supposed to appear during startup have finally turned on, and it is now correctly reading and recognizing my DVDRW Drive, when before it listed two unknown and unusable ones. It just took a really, really, really long time. Hopefully that'll at least help pinpoint the problem a bit more.


----------



## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Go to Search and type *CMD* right click the results and *Run As Administrator*. In the *Elevated Command Prompt* type* chkdsk /R *and press enter. Now type a *Y* for Yes and reboot the computer. Check Disk will run through 5 stages at next bootup and test the integrity of the HDD.


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

I did what you said, but it was awfully fast for a chkdsk. Restarted, waited a minute or so, then it said it was 100% done checking C drive and it booted back up.

It seems to be doing a bit better now...my startup programs are all there (didn't take waiting overnight this time) and my music loaded instantly. Daemon Tools didn't take 50 years to open, and it recognizes the Sims 3 disc in my DVDRW Drive. I'm not sure if its fixed now or if I should still be worried.


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

1. Download Temporary File Cleaner from here. 

2. Make sure that you *Save As...* the file to your *desktop*. 










3. Make sure to close out all opened programs! 

TFC will close all open program to run, be sure to safe any work! 
4. Double Click on the *TFC.exe* file that is saved to your desktop. 










5. Windows will ask to either Run or Cancel the program. Click on *Run*. 











6. Once TFC has opened, click the *Start button*. 










*7. Allow TFC to run uninterrupted.* 

8. Your desktop icons and other programs may disappear during this process. That is normal. 

9. After TFC has finished it should automatically reboot the PC. 

10. If it does not reboot, reboot manually. 

11. It is normal that after running TFC that the PC will be slower to boot for the first time.


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

TFC cleaned about 600MB of temp files. I dunno if that's a lot, but yeah.


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

Did it help with system speed at all?


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

I suppose it might've, but I can't be sure. All the problems I was experiencing seem to have vanished after I did the chkdsk /r thing spunk.funk suggested. I'm just worried it'll return as suddenly as it left (and appeared the first time).


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

You can also try to run a System Defrag.


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

According to windows, current status is OK (0% fragmented), and its set to automatically defrag every month (I dropped it down from its weekly setting before when it turned on out of nowhere and wrecked my performance).


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

Download Speccy from here: Speccy - Download 











The software should ask to either Run, Save or Cancel, Click *Run*. 

Now follow the onscreen instructions to finish the installation of Speccy. 










Once installed Speccy should open up. Go to *File* > *Publish Snapshot...* 

This should open up a link to your personal snapshot. *Please post that in your next reply!* 

Also include the make and model number of your power supply.


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/Rs4dl3reIkjIAGZtnX1Kxsj

Enthusiast Series is my psu, seems to be 1st gen tx750


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

I'm not seeing anything that really could slow you down to much. You only have 3% of Free hard drive space left so that could have some effect.

Running your main OS from a hard drive with all of your data is not really a good idea.


----------



## Kinetix7 (Feb 25, 2009)

Well it's running fine now, although for how long I don't know.

I've been meaning to get an SSD (any you recommend?) to throw my OS and games on, but i'm not sure if they're worth the price/size difference yet. I only got around $100 to drop on my computer (since I just upgraded my GPU and monitor), and it'd be sad if I spent that on an SSD (if that's even possible that cheap) only to have my 2TB drive die and be unable to replace it/transfer all its contents to a new drive.


----------



## Masterchiefxx17 (Feb 27, 2010)

SSDs are not really worth the value right now. They are still a little high in price.

If I would recommend a brand it would be in this order: Samsung, Seagate, Crucial, SanDisk, Corsair.


----------



## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

You should always have a current backup of your precious files on your 2TB drive on more then one HDD. Whether you get an SSD or not. To maintain your current HDD perform Check Disk whenever you computer starts running sluggishly, and also run the Temp File Cleaner. Should keep it running smooth


----------

