Extremely Slow System

Hey everyone,

I was gone for a few days, and when I came back and booted up my PC, it was extremely slow. It was fine before, but now it is very slow. Nobody used it while I was gone, and nothing happened to it (it was unplugged the whole time)

Here are my components:
i7 2600k @ Stock (never overclocked)
8 GB DDR3 RAM
1 TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
2 TB Western Digital My Book External HDD

Also, the external HDD has been working fine for around 3 months now, but suddenly, it isn't working at all, and Windows wants me to format it to use it, even though I have files on it! I'm currently running a scan with Malware Bytes, and trying to save my external HDD files with TestDisk. Any ideas what might be the problem? Malware Bytes has scanned 82k files, with 0 viruses so far, and TestDisk is telling me to "Please wait..." for the last 20 minutes. Also, I've clicked System Restore, telling it to open 30 minutes ago, and it hasn't opened yet.

Any ideas? I'm thinking I'll have to return the external HDD and get an internal one for backups. :/

Malwarebytes is a good start. You could also try the old standards like Disk Cleanup, Defrag, Check Disk and System File Checker scan.

You could also try a Clean Boot (AKA Clean Startup) to see if any applications are causing conflicts. This optimization tutorial has some more suggestions of things to try. Not everything may apply to you but you can pick and choose.

And one of the Forum experts prepared this really in-depth troubleshooting guide. It's helped many resolve their computer problems.

Hi all,

The PC was on for 6+ hours today, and completed the Malware bytes scan, with no virus or anything found.

As for the TestDisk, it said please wait, and 6 hours later, same message, no progress. It didn't freeze up either, I closed it, and it closed without a problem. I'll try fragmentation and all that stuff too.

As for the disk usage, it only uses 100% of the disk when doing a system scan, like in Avast. Other than that, just browsing the web like I'm doing right now with Chrome leaves the HDD idle pretty much.

EDIT: I've tried sfc /scannow, and the command prompt doesn't do anything, even if left open for a minute or so.

I'm doing a disk check right now, but the progress bar is staying at 0%.

Also, Avast got stuck scanning this file: "SVC: xmlprov> ???"

It was stuck on it for at least 2 minutes, scanning at 300 MB/s, and eventually dropping to around 70 MB/s.

Any idea? I'm getting pretty aggravated with my system right now. Thanks for all the help so far though! :)

EDIT: The Recycle bin won't open either, but I can open any other folder perfectly fine.

It could be something to do with the external hard drive
Have you tried disconnecting the external hard drive and plug it in only when needed? Every time you boot your computer, windows is going to going to check for that drive.
Does event viewer show anything?

Well, thanks for all the help everybody! I've figured out the problem!

The problem was indeed the external hard drive, don't know why I didn't think of that before.

But I did a Memory Test, just to make sure my RAM wasn't bad, and the system passed that.

Off to see if the place I bought it from will still cover it under warranty, and a return. Maybe I'll get an internal hard drive for backups now, in a RAID.

Glad to hear you sorted things out. Thanks for posting back.