Not responding - now can't open Outlook, check disk

I just noticed the memory at around 40% recently (I haven't paid too much attention to it because I have a whole lot more memory now than I did with my other computer), and it's when there are just one or a couple of apps going.

Hairfallingout said:

I just noticed the memory at around 40% recently (I haven't paid too much attention to it because I have a whole lot more memory now than I did with my other computer), and it's when there are just one or a couple of apps going.

Seems quite normal then, and please follow the two tutorials which I just posted to help you, start with the cleaning up of factory bloatware first.

What happened to my reply? I just recently noticed the memory running about 40% even when I only have one or two applications going. I haven't paid too much attention to it because I have more memory now than I did with my other computer.

As you can see, I have a lot of stuff in startup, so it will take me a while to go through that. For now I'm going to leave a few things (Intel, some Toshiba) on and check them later. The troubleshooting will take a while as well.

Okay, now I see my prior reply and your response. I'm going to take a break.

You only have 4GB RAM, and have many programs starting at boot with applications also running, so to me it seems quite normal.

Thanks for updating your system specifications too, and work with the two tutorials provided and then post back your results; bear in mind a failing hard-drive could still be the issue here.

You need to restart for the changes to take effect, and you can get someone to install the hard-drive for you if your unsure about it.

The programs can be downloaded from the internet, but do you still have .exe files for these programs still on your computer? As you could transfer those to the external hard-drive and then reinstall them onto the new hard-drive later.

I'm not sure the hard drive is the problem, so I'm going to continue to troubleshoot. I ran MSE in five minutes this morning while in the diagnostic start up mode. There were no problems. I also tried to do scanpst.exe in diagnostic mode, but I received the same unexpected error suggesting to run a check disk program.

Before I went into the diagnostic mode, it took an hour and 15 minutes to shut down. Is there a way to get internet connection in safe mode or in diagnostic mode? If I could do that, then it would be easier to go through the steps you linked above.

Yes, Safe Mode with Networking;

Safe Mode

Windows keeps suggesting Check Disk, so does seem to pointing to a hard-drive issue if Windows wants you to check your hard-drive for any bad sectors.

Anyway, keep working yourself through those troubleshooting steps.

It's hard to work through the steps when it takes so long to start up and shut down.

I'm in safe mode & networking now. What is the difference between the services that are listed in task manager vs the services in msconfig? I want to start only the services that are on in safe mode and then add services one by one to see what the hang up is with start up.

I wouldn't disable any services within Task Manager or the Services tab of msconfig as these are usually important Windows services which are essential for Windows to boot properly.