Diagnose my computer problem?

Factual Questions
1

HP Pavilion desktop, running Windows 7. Use MSE for viruses, updated as of last wednesay and a scan on Wednesday found nothing.

Friday night, suddenly, my computer slowed way down, as in, taking several minutes to respond to clicks. It was late, I was tired, I just shut down.

Saturday morning the computer started normally, everything seemed fine … for about four minutes. Then it slowed down again. Like slogging through molasses. And then even slower – or maybe it stopped doing anything at all. It got to the point that it would take more than ten minutes to change the screen, either in response to an order from me, or by the running program making progress.

I forced a shut down. On restart, it failed to make it all the way through booting windows. Forced a shut down. Repeated this several times: I booted into safe mode – came up, stopped working after a few minutes. I used F9 to run a diagnostic, it reported the processers and memory passed, but it started slowing down towards the end of the memory scan. It eventually finished that, but by then it was so slow (or stopped) that it didn’t start whatever test it should do next and I bailed out.

Many hours later I tried to start it again, and this time it seemed to load windows properly, and I was able to run things for a few minutes… and then the slowdown set it.

My brother suggested maybe it was a heat problem, that the processors were slowing down for protection because they were getting too hot. We took the cover off, and by eye the two fans in the case and the fan on top of the processors are running.

So… Does this sound familiar to anyone? Is it most likely to be a hardware problem?

Or is it some virus thingy? During one of the brief times it was working I started Task Manager and didn’t see any unknown applications running, but some process with an innocuous name would escape me. The processors were not running hard at that point, something like 3 to 12 % per the display.

Thanks for any help.

2

I’d use stuff like SpyBot and AdAware to check it out, and maybe a backup anti-virus (I like AVG).

3

That should be the next step, but with only about 4 minutes ‘running time’ I don’t think I can even install such a program, let alone do a scan.

:frowning:

4

It would be nice if you could pull the drive and scan it as a slave in another PC.

5

carnivorousplant has a very good suggestion, and my own did fail to take runtime into account.

6

Check out this thread. I had the same symptoms and it turned out I got hit with malware (again) courtasy of SD. The first post has a way of diagnosing if you got hit with the same thing.

7

This is outside Windows, right? If so you can almost rule out malware. I wonder if your PC is gradually overheating and the processor is down-clocking itself in response? Pop the cover and check the dust levels inside and that all the fans are working.

8

He said in the OP he did that

but I agree this is still a strong possibility, there are more fans that this - the video for a start, and the power supply.

9

With cases worse than this, I pull all the cards out and see what errors I get.
Try pulling the memory out and replacing them one at a time. Bad memory has been the culprit at work some times.

10

The CPU heatsink can get full of dust without impeding the fan.

11

If I’m reading right, your problem starts, persists for a while, goes away and then recurs in a pattern. If so, then I don’t think it’s the same as what I’ve got: the slow down sets in, gets worse, and then stays unchanged, at least for as long as I’ve had patience to sit it out.

12

Yes, this is some diagnostic program put in by HP, which you start before Window comes up. So that’s a good point that it’s likely not malware. Yeah! Nice to narrow the possibilities.

That the processors were overheating is what my brother suggested as a possibilities. We did open the cover and look: the fans were turning but of course, who knows if they were not doing it as fast as they shouild? As to dust, I didn’t notice any great accumulation (the computer is less than two years old, and not in a very dusty room) but maybe it only takes a little, if it gets in the wrong place? I will get a can of compressed air and have a go.

I’ve remembered something that might be related: it seems like the fan has two speeds, a second one I mentally dub “hyperdrive” – much louder than usual, I’m assuming a faster speed.

Normally I’d only hear it during long sessions of a game like Hexen or Doom, it would run a minute or so, then go back to normal.

But this past summer I heard it much more frequently, and sometimes while doing nothing more than wordprocessing.

Could it be that this was due to the heat up starting to happen? For whatever reason? But I haven’t heard the ‘hyperdrive’ sound for a while (like, for days before this slowdown happened.)

Anyway, on the whole, it sounds like a hardware problem.

Which is good news from my pov: I’m terrible about backing up, and would hate for the solution to involve reinstalling Windows.

Thank you, and to all the others who took time to read and comment.

Oh, one last thing: the only convenient options for computer repairs are Staples and Best Buy. Any basis for trying one over the other?

13

You could try running it with the covers off. If it is a heat thing, you’ll presumably get a lot better airflow that way. You don’t want to do it that way for a long time, but it would a good diagnostic hint.

14

Great idea! I’ve got the cover off and a portable fan running right now — and it’s been 17 minutes and it’s still running right! Versus about 4 minutes all the other times recently.

So. Think this is proof that it’s a heat problem?

Because I’ve been calling various places that claim to do computer repair, and all of them immediately start talking about running anti-malware stuff – even when I try to explain about it might being a heat problem – and they want me to bring in my windows disks and repair disks… and, basically, I get the feeling they follow a script that will involve wiping and reinstalling windows BEFORE they look at hardware. :mad:

I think what I may need to find is some smart hs student.

15

Sounds like you’ve probably got it diagnosed. This is progress. :slight_smile:

16

You really may need nothing more than a good cleanup with a can of compressed air. You’d be surprised just how much dust accumulates inside PC cases.

17

You should have 3 or more fans inside your PC. There’s the CPU fan, the GPU fan, a case fan and a fan for the PSU. ensure all are working. As already said, a blast of compressed air will often work wonders. Top tip: when you use the compressed air, have the fan blowing as well so that the dust gets blown away as well as blown out.

18

Sounds like you got it worked-out.

I’d like to report for anybody who comes across this thread in the future that a faulty HD controller can switch the HD into “PIO” mode*. This mode is extremely, extremely, extremely slow and can cause symptoms like you’re seeing.

That happened to me once and it took me ages to find the root cause. SMART didn’t report it for some reason, you had to go into the HD’s panel in Device Manager and look at what mode it was set in.

*) That is, CPU sends data request to the HD, waits for response, sends the next request, etc. As opposed to DMA mode, where the CPU says “here’s some memory, fill it all up and lemme know when you’re done”

19

Another possibility, that happened to a friend of mine:
the CPU-heat sink connection failed, so the heat sink was just sitting on the CPU, but not making q good thermal connection. So it overheated quickly.

If your fans are working, and you don’t see excessive dust, but you continue to have symptoms of overheating, you might investigate this.

By the way, the fix was cheap & easy: clean off the old thermal past & apply a new layer.

20

I forgot a single swallow does not make a summer. :frowning:

The next time I tried the exterior fan thing, the computer didn’t even finish booting.

The time after that it managed to run for 15 minutes.

Three more attempts after that haven’t managed to get all the way through booting.

<sigh>

I am now disgusted with the whole thing, and starting to look at new computers.