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W7 system: suddenly long boots and periods of ultra slow performance
I have a W7 Professional system running an i7. It was working ok until yesterday. Started by noticing the sound system had stopped working. There was a red X through the speaker icon in the lower right corner. So I rebooted. It went into a chksdk mode (that made me nervous) and then booted but taking much longer than usual. The normal screen eventually came up but the disk access light stayed on for maybe 10 minutes during which I was getting about zero performance. During the boot I got an error message "could not start event service, standard users may not be able to log onEventually the disk access light went off so I tried a few things and the light came back on solid again, stayed on for a numkber of minutes, then went off again. The desktop had changed a little just some changes in the sizes of things and colors. Not sure exactly but the screen just looked a little different.
So something has changed but I don't really know what. I am not sure how to diagnose the problem. While the light is on, I can not bring up task manager.
Things I could try that I know about:
1. I have a disk image from afew weeks ago. I could restore back to that disk image.
2. Try a system restore point. Not sure which ones are in there (PC is at home and I am at worknow).
3. Repair install. I just made a DVD for repaire install.
So i could use some advice on how best to proceed; which order to try things, and maybe there are some things to try not on my list. I ran Hijackthis and don't see anything obvious loading like malware. Just seems like the system is having a problem. Also, I ran Symantec Endpoint Protection, did a full scan last night and it found nothing.
Thanks in advance,
Mark