# Still stupidly slow after windows reinstall



## Nordic (Dec 18, 2012)

My uncle was asking me how to speed up his pc. I happened to be at his house so I went to go defrag his computer and clean cookies etc. It took about 10 minutes for the defragger to open. I was shocked. Not much I could do after that.

A week later he called me saying he couldn't boot his computer. I thought that must be why his computer was so slow before. I checked it out. He apparently had some virus that had filled his hdd with porn, when I last saw it he had less than 30gb of space used. So I wiped it and reinstalled windows 7 for him. The computer is still so so stupidly slow. It is unusable in my opinion.


Its a some gateway computer.
Specs:
i3 530
6gb ram
1tb hdd
windows 7

Why oh why is his computer so slow even after a reinstall? I would suspect the hdd. I am pretty much stumped on this one.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 18, 2012)

Sounds like a hard drive issue. Try running HTtune health test to see if their are any bad blocks in the drive. I have a feeling the drive is on its way out. Upgrade it to a 256GB SSD and itll fly


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## Nordic (Dec 18, 2012)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> Sounds like a hard drive issue. Try running HTtune health test to see if their are any bad blocks in the drive. I have a feeling the drive is on its way out. Upgrade it to a 256GB SSD and itll fly



I could do a 64gb drive on it with how he uses it. Its going to take probably 20-30 minutes to get httune open. Maybe I will just load gparted and see use its test.


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## lyndonguitar (Dec 18, 2012)

A full reinstall and still slow, Yeap, It's probably the HDD. If you have a spare HDD to use. try it.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 18, 2012)

The virus probably just raped the hard drive. But usually when trying to load things, the hard drive is doing about 80% if not more of the work at hand, if its its taking that long, the drive is on its way out. Replace it with another drive, or just say screw it and throw an SSD in there. 

SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III...


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## Nordic (Dec 18, 2012)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> The virus probably just raped the hard drive. But usually when trying to load things, the hard drive is doing about 80% if not more of the work at hand, if its its taking that long, the drive is on its way out. Replace it with another drive, or just say screw it and throw an SSD in there.
> 
> SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III...



Its my uncles computer. He wouldn't want to pay much and if I did suggest and ssd it would be a 64gb or less one because he only needs enough for the OS.

Being a gateway with some gateway case, I am not even sure how to get the hdd out. There is one screw that releases the hdd bay so you can access the screws that hold the hdd in. The problem is that one screw only has about 3-4 inches clearance. I did try to take it out to look at it, and test it in other system. I have smaller screw drivers but I can't get enough torque to even get that one little screw to budge.


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## claylomax (Dec 18, 2012)

Buy your uncle a new computer for Xmas.


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## Nordic (Dec 18, 2012)

claylomax said:


> Buy your uncle a new computer for Xmas.



He has an i3 530... all he needs is a new hdd. All he uses it for is to look up his fantasy football stuff.


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## silkstone (Dec 18, 2012)

Get Hiren's boot CD and do a low-level format of the disk. Re-install windows and see how it goes. 

It sounds like the virus might have perpetuated onto your latest clean install. 

If that doesn't work; a couple of good programs for looking into HDD problems are HDat2, Vivard and HDD regenerator. I just revived a completely dead Samsung 500gb drive using those tools.


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## jboydgolfer (Dec 18, 2012)

Maybe kind of a Stupid Question ,But have you run chkdsk c:/f/r  ?
 That SHOULD give you the extent of the problem, as long as you go into Computer management Console(after running the chkdsk), it will give you the results of the chkdsk.
Go to event viewer/event logs/applications/ look for wininit. that'll tell you if it's Physical HDD issue's.

Hope you get it worked out 
Happy Holiday's


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## sttubs (Dec 18, 2012)

If you can't get the old hdd out I'd just leave it in there and unplug it, then mount the new drive to the floor of the case with double sided automotive tape.


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## TheMailMan78 (Dec 18, 2012)

james888 said:


> My uncle was asking me how to speed up his pc. I happened to be at his house so I went to go defrag his computer and clean cookies etc. It took about 10 minutes for the defragger to open. I was shocked. Not much I could do after that.
> 
> A week later he called me saying he couldn't boot his computer. I thought that must be why his computer was so slow before. I checked it out. He apparently had some virus that had filled his hdd with porn, when I last saw it he had less than 30gb of space used. So I wiped it and reinstalled windows 7 for him. The computer is still so so stupidly slow. It is unusable in my opinion.
> 
> ...



Make everything one partition and try writing one pass with zeros. This will "fix" any bad allocations that might be slowing the drive down. It will take a while but Ive seen it bring back drives to new performance. It will also make sure there is no nasty left over thats just got a "invalid" flag on it but still active.

Not saying this will fix your issue but its worth a try before you spend money.


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## johnspack (Dec 18, 2012)

Darn,  just delete the partition,  recreate the partition,  reformat,  reinstall,  done!
Edit:  if that doesn't fix it,  then there's a hardware problem...  hd,  cable,  or port.


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## Exeodus (Dec 19, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Make everything one partition and try writing one pass with zeros. This will "fix" any bad allocations that might be slowing the drive down. It will take a while but Ive seen it bring back drives to new performance. It will also make sure there is no nasty left over thats just got a "invalid" flag on it but still active.
> 
> Not saying this will fix your issue but its worth a try before you spend money.



DBAN is a good program for that.


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## suraswami (Dec 19, 2012)

I recently bought an open box HP laptop for dirt cheap.  to boot into windows 7 it took about 30 minutes, to open IE it took for ever, Windows explorer same thing.  Thought the previous owner raped the machine.  So pulled out the hdd, replaced with a spare hdd, installed windows all good.  So contacted HP and explained them the situation, they shipped me next day Fedex a higher speed and higher capacity hdd.  sent back the broken one.  before sending back I used seagate tools to fill zeros, run all sorts of diag, reinstall W7, W8 all crap.  Same behaviour.

I still didn't use the new hdd they sent, still sealed.  Instead using a Kingston HyperX 128GB SSD and don't want to touch that hdd anymore!!  The laptop boots into W8 in 12 secs, resume from hibernation in 7 secs and oh the CPU is AMD C-300.

So that i3 should be better. Just put in a new SSD and be done with it.


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## TRWOV (Dec 19, 2012)

james888 said:


> Its my uncles computer. He wouldn't want to pay much and if I did suggest and ssd it would be a 64gb or less one because he only needs enough for the OS.
> 
> Being a gateway with some gateway case, I am not even sure how to get the hdd out. There is one screw that releases the hdd bay so you can access the screws that hold the hdd in. The problem is that one screw only has about 3-4 inches clearance. I did try to take it out to look at it, and test it in other system. I have smaller screw drivers but I can't get enough torque to even get that one little screw to budge.



If he only needs an OS drive you could get by with a 32GB SSD. A fully patched install should take about 20GB + hibernation file (same amount as your RAM, 6GB in his case). If you disable hibernation you can claim that space back.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 19, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> If he only needs an OS drive you could get by with a 32GB SSD. A fully patched install should take about 20GB + hibernation file (same amount as your RAM, 6GB in his case). If you disable hibernation you can claim that space back.



thats cutting it slow close man. Becuase that 32GB is actually only about 25-26GB to Windows. Just how it works. Atleast a 64gb would be good.

Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Inte...


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## Nordic (Dec 19, 2012)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> thats cutting it slow close man. Becuase that 32GB is actually only about 25-26GB to Windows. Just how it works. Atleast a 64gb would be good.
> 
> Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Inte...



If I were to get an ssd it would be a 64gb just because the price of the 30gb compared to the 64gb is negligible. $50 for a 30gb ssd COME ON. I could easily fit him onto a 32gb though because he currently only is using 20gb of his 1tb drive and I could probably cut that 20gb down a few gigs. I did talk to him about it. If I can't fix it he wants me to find him the cheaper working hdd I can find. If I buy new it will be a cheaper 64gb ssd. I saw a tb hdd for $35 shipped in the sales threads here that I may look into.

Gosh guys. Thanks for all the tips. Over the last 4 years I have become quite knowledgeable with computer related things but hdd problems are still that one sore spot. It took me weeks of effort with an extra month or two of procrastination to fix my own hdd after I deleted the ubuntu partition from a dual boot machine. For that case, it turns out I just had to set the primary boot flag to the correct partition.

Anyways. I am downloading some of the suggested tools. I did finally get this hdd out after much man handling It turns out it is a WD green 1tb which afaik are not that fast to begin with but not thiiiisss slow. I'll run some tests are report back here when I get around to it.


Also, a laptop I just fixed for someone had a bad hdd. I just replaced it with a good hdd they had in their other dead laptop. It had some code, I forget now, that google said was a physical problem. That the mechanical write head was broken or something. I would not think that is fixable but ... what do you guys think?


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## lemonadesoda (Dec 19, 2012)

I once made a very naiive mistake of buying a second hand HDD. Never again. Not just the lost time, but the lost data. You cannot put a price on it.

The time taken setting up windows, installing apps, loading data. Backing up. Trying to fix a HDD problem. The hours and hours. It just isnt worth it.  Add to that the loss of important documents, installers, photos, music. Maybe some you can replace or recreate. But the time... the time...

At the sign of a faulty drive, replace it with new, and get a sledgehammer to the old. YOU DO YOURSELF NO FAVOURS by trying to revive it. While people might talk about their success stories, they are few and far between, and you operate at a higher RISK of failure in the future. IMO that just isnt worth it.  Cost your time, whether $1, $5 or $50 per hour... and you will quickly see that old unpredictable HDD are for the hammer.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Dec 19, 2012)

james888 said:


> If I were to get an ssd it would be a 64gb just because the price of the 30gb compared to the 64gb is negligible. $50 for a 30gb ssd COME ON. I could easily fit him onto a 32gb though because he currently only is using 20gb of his 1tb drive and I could probably cut that 20gb down a few gigs. I did talk to him about it. If I can't fix it he wants me to find him the cheaper working hdd I can find. If I buy new it will be a cheaper 64gb ssd. I saw a tb hdd for $35 shipped in the sales threads here that I may look into.
> 
> Gosh guys. Thanks for all the tips. Over the last 4 years I have become quite knowledgeable with computer related things but hdd problems are still that one sore spot. It took me weeks of effort with an extra month or two of procrastination to fix my own hdd after I deleted the ubuntu partition from a dual boot machine. For that case, it turns out I just had to set the primary boot flag to the correct partition.
> 
> ...



Definitely go SSD if he doesnt need 1TB of storage. yeah Green drives aren't that slow haha.


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## Nordic (Dec 19, 2012)

First set of diagnostics. From gparted.



Spoiler



GParted 0.11.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid

Libparted 2.3
Check and repair file system (ntfs) on /dev/sda3  00:00:59    ( SUCCESS )

calibrate /dev/sda3  00:00:15    ( SUCCESS )

path: /dev/sda3
start: 25,372,672
end: 1,953,521,663
size: 1,928,148,992 (919.41 GiB)
check file system on /dev/sda3 for errors and (if possible) fix them  00:00:40    ( SUCCESS )

ntfsresize -P -i -f -v /dev/sda3

ntfsresize v2012.1.15AR.1 (libntfs-3g)
Device name : /dev/sda3
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 987212280320 bytes (987213 MB)
Current device size: 987212283904 bytes (987213 MB)
Checking for bad sectors ...
Checking filesystem consistency ...
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use : 20864 MB (2.1%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
Estimating smallest shrunken size supported ...
File feature Last used at By inode
$MFT : 6343 MB 0
Multi-Record : 8166 MB 62461
$MFTMirr : 1 MB 1
Compressed : 19595 MB 22142
Sparse : 19304 MB 58838
Ordinary : 495715 MB 65199
You might resize at 20863561728 bytes or 20864 MB (freeing 966349 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!
grow file system to fill the partition  00:00:04    ( SUCCESS )

run simulation  00:00:04    ( SUCCESS )

ntfsresize -P --force --force /dev/sda3 --no-action

ntfsresize v2012.1.15AR.1 (libntfs-3g)
Device name : /dev/sda3
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 987212280320 bytes (987213 MB)
Current device size: 987212283904 bytes (987213 MB)
New volume size : 987212280320 bytes (987213 MB)
Nothing to do: NTFS volume size is already OK.
real resize  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )

ntfsresize -P --force --force /dev/sda3

ntfsresize v2012.1.15AR.1 (libntfs-3g)
Device name : /dev/sda3
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 987212280320 bytes (987213 MB)
Current device size: 987212283904 bytes (987213 MB)
New volume size : 987212280320 bytes (987213 MB)
Nothing to do: NTFS volume size is already OK.

========================================


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## Aquinus (Dec 19, 2012)

james888 said:


> First set of diagnostics. From gparted.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Checking and running a SMART test will be a better move. By the time GParted tells you that you're in trouble, your drive is already almost dead.


```
sudo apt-get install smartmontools
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda # will give you stats.
sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sda # runs a short test.
sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda # runs a long test.
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda # also shows the results of the tests.
# short takes maybe 10 minutes, long takes several hours. Not all errors will be caught by a short test but will be on a long test.
```


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