I plugged out my PC as it was shutting down. Now it is painfully slow.

[garrymccarthy]

Hi, I'm not sure if something similar has been posted here before, spent a while searching the net for similar isuues but found nothing...

The other night, I plugged out my PC as it was shutting down. Now it is painfully slow to start up.... It's on the black "Starting Windows" screen for a good three to four minutes, even longer. Before this it all used only take a few seconds.... It is also much slower than before when I get into the OS.

Is there any tool I can download to diagnose this problem? I have disabled some services and startup programs since and made no difference. I restored the PC to a time before I plugged it out, I tried safe mode, and I did a start up repair. Nothing fixed the problem. My last resort is doing a clean install of Windows 7, as I have a hell of a lot of stuff installed on the hard drive and don't fancy wiping it just yet...

Do you think the hard drive is damaged?

My PC spec can be found in my profile.

Any help greatly appreciated... Thanks!

 

[Luckystar]

Hi Garrymccarthy , wlecome to the forums.

Best you do a startup repair

Try this tutorial and do it about 3 times - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

Lucky

 

[garrymccarthy]

Yeah I tried all that. It tells me it can't find any problems with startup, so it won't even do a startup repair. Besides that, my PC started running perfectly after a while just there, I tried restarting it then to see if it would stay... and it shut down nicely in the space of a few seconds like it used to, but then I was back to square one when it tried booting up again: waiting ages for it to boot, and slow performance in the OS. I'm very confused...

 

[Luckystar]

Ok, next idea.

Try this tutorial - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

Try running that a couple of times as well.

Lucky

 

[Hopalong X]

Try a System Restore before you did the unplug during shutdown.

Easy to try and will revert everything back to old settings.

Always the easiest way to return where you were before you had the problem.
Mike

 

[garrymccarthy]

@Luckystar, I'm running that scan now... Thanks for the help. Will let you know what happens.
@Hopalong, yep I've tried a system restore already. No joy.

I have a funny feeling that plugging out my PC while it was shutting down caused some damage on the inside of the machine itself. The PC doesn't detect that there is a Windows 7 CD in my drive even when I set my CD drive to boot order number one. The data coming from the hard drive sounds a little funny. Kinda like a stop and go. Also when I'm playing music from either Windows Media player or ableton, the audio starts and stops. As if the data isn't being read in fast enough...

 

[garrymccarthy]

I ran that scan. It found no problems at all... Any other ideas people?

 

[Hopalong X]

I have no other ideas but if no one else comes up with a cure then as a last resort.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

You will need your Windows CD for this if you have one.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if your Windows was preinstalled.
Being a Dell it may be.
Then you may have to go with Dell Recovery if the original OS was the Win 7. You will need to back up all your wanted to keep files for this.
You will need your manual or visit Dell for instructions.
Returns to Factory as you brought it home.
I only have done HP's not sure about how Dell's do it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have Win 7 upgrade or have a full version retail or OEM disk then you can do the repair install with your Win 7 upgrade, Retail or OEM disk.
This will NOT effect your files, pics or folders.

All I have. If you decide to go Repair install and have questions ask.
Good luck.
Mike

 

[Bill2]

Unplugging the pc while it was running or shutting down could have caused errors and data corruption. Suggest you reinstall the OS and everything else- do a clean install.

 

[garrymccarthy]

Thanks Hopalong, I may have to do that in the end.

I downloaded DiskBench to check my hard drive speed, and it produced some interesting results. (The speed greatly varied from time to time... not sure if that's common though)

Here are the results from creating 2 48MB files:

FIRST GO (VERY SLOW):

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 7601 ms
Transfer Rate: 6.315 MB/s

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench2.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 9427 ms
Transfer Rate: 5.092 MB/s

Create File Bench ended​

AFTER A WHILE I DID IT A SECOND TIME (Much faster):

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 499 ms
Transfer Rate: 96.192 MB/s

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench2.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 499 ms
Transfer Rate: 96.192 MB/s

Create File Bench ended​

AGAIN, FAST:

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 483 ms
Transfer Rate: 99.379 MB/s

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench2.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 469 ms
Transfer Rate: 102.345 MB/s

Create File Bench ended​

FINALLY SLOW AGAIN:

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 5698 ms
Transfer Rate: 8.424 MB/s

Created file: C:\Users\Garry\Desktop\DiskBench2.bin
Size: 50331648 bytes
Time: 5228 ms
Transfer Rate: 9.181 MB/s

Create File Bench ended​

Surely this means there is a problem with Hard Drive/Motherboard/IDE Cables?
What do you guys think?

 

[gregrocker]

Download and burn to CD the HD maker's diagnostics/repair CD to run an extended repair scan:
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
HD Diagnostic

Follow this with http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

Other troubleshooting steps which might reveal more problems: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...-lags-every-couple-seconds-2.html#post1131640

 

[garrymccarthy]

It's fixed! I ran a checkdsk on startup and it found a file that needed to be repaired and now it's working perfectly! Complete reinstall of the OS avoided. Thanks for the help lads!

 

[Luckystar]

Not a problem mate.

Glad we could all help you in the end.

Congrats on getting your PC up and running again.

Lucky

 

[Searcher1]

I have an XPS720. Installing Windows 7 Ultimate (clean) I found the MS checker showed little problems to encounter there are many as you proceed. Let Windows 7 install naturally. You might be tempted to install Nvidia drivers however be warned they seems to cause more problems than they are worth.
The only things I (had to) additionally install were the Creative driver system (with a few problems as they too were never designed for Win7). Then I encountered 'hangs' and suspected this was due to Microsoft Security Elelments as I use Bitedefender for firewall/anti-virus. I un-installed this and it seems to work quite well now.
Games can be a problem though as I use 'Rail Simulators' and they tend to hang with 'nrvd64' being the problem, again MSSE might have been the cause.
The worst thing is that for no reason whatever the PC might hang. What should have been seemless turned out to be a 'googling' nightmare attempting to sort out the problems. So much for the Dell 'built for the 'future' rubbish they purport to believe!
Michael