New hard drive or reformat?

[supermasterpig]

I was asked by a friend / coworker to look at their computer. They have a windows vista hp computer they put ram into it and an external. It now has 5 gb of ram and his computer is still outrageously slow. It turn out his 250 gb hdd is split into 2 partitions a partition called back up that takes up 80 gb and is full and his c partition that has the 170 gb left but has only 25 gb of free space. I assumed this was the culpret for such slow speed since everything else checked out. He had a dual core processor above 2 ghz. We moved every uneeded file over to the external and it had no effect it only freed up 10 gb and computer was still slow / unreponsive. My question is what should I do? He asked me if i could fix it Im assuming I can. Do I a. Buy a new bigger hard drive and install vista b. back up his files on external and do a clean install on hdd he has now (I dont know how to put the backed up data on the c drive...) or c. is there a way to delete the partition called back up and move its backed up data to the external so that there is free space on the c drive and it should speed it up? Oh and I checked for virus's I didnt find any.

 

[Golden]

Hi,

Can you post his full PC specifications here? IT may be something else apart from the hard disk. When you say it runs slow, what do you mean by slow? Is the copy process slow, or does it it boot up slowly.

We need a bit more detail to help you out here.

Regards,
Golden

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I wouldn't think that 25 gigs remaining on a 170 gig C partition would be a major issue.

Questions:

It's slow. In what way? Booting? Processing a video file? Saving a random Excel file?

Did it only recently become slow?

Have you looked around in task manager to see how many processes are running and what apps are using RAM?

Have you looked at the startup tab of msconfig to see what starts up automatically on a fresh boot?

Does the hard drive pass diagnostic tests?

 

[supermasterpig]

I do not have his full IT specs with me. Also its slow in everything boot up i timed at 45 min and over every time i booted *5 times* If it ever went to screen saver it would freeze and id have to get to task manager. Saving files are not possible the pc stops responding. The computer has progressivly gotten slower until now where it is hard to do anything. It takes over 20 min to look at the process's page and its has arouns 100-150 process. theres about 10 programs on start up and disabling every uneeded program still doesnt effect boot up time. It baffles me theirs no virus or anything and its just ungodly a slow it takes hours to get anywhere. I checked the hard drive for anyfaults and did not find any im confused. I just assumed installing a new os would be better.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Over 100 processes is out of hand. I usually have about 40.

Look at processes again and rank them by RAM usage.

What are the 4 or 5 things at the top of the list and how much RAM are they using?

 

[scrooge]

i would copy any data that he needs from the ( c: drive ) make sure he has the vista disk so you can reinstall it.
when the screen asks what drive to install on i'd delete the ( d: drive ) putting it back to just one drive and then reinstall windows vista.

hope that helps

scrooge

 

[Golden]

Wow. Can you try the following for me too please when you get to his PC again?

Download and install this program:

CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World

Run it, and then save a screen capture of the results and upload it here. This will alow us to have a definitive look at the health of the HDD's.

Regards,
Golden

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Which specific anti-virus and anti-malware tools have you used? I'd certainly try several of them as none of them is perfect. A bad dose of something can even prevent your tools from running.

 

[supermasterpig]

Alright first things first . I planned on just redoing it all on monday but form what you guys are asking me maybe I should just see if I can take his computer back home with me for a couple days ( its unsuable anyways.) ignatzatsonic- I took a coupel virus's off his computer a couple months ago and it sped up but not much. I have malware bytes on there and avast free version. I have not had a problem finding a virus with those programs but if you have an idea. I will put that program on when I get a chance I will call him in the morning and see if I can pick it up and play with it tom.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Well, if you can work on it for a day or two, it might be easiest to just reformat and start over.

But...........a couple of key points:

You have to determine yes or no if the hard drive and hardware generally are OK.

You have to make at least an informed guess of what was going on. Otherwise the user is going to keep up with possibly bad habits and end up in the same situation 3 months from now, after you have reinstalled everything.

An ordinary home user who has over 100 processes running and has a slow PC with 5 gigs of RAM likely has bad habits and isn't doing any proper maintenance.

 

[supermasterpig]

The hard drive and hardware are ok I didnt see any problems. As far as the habits they are the head of a county hunters society or w.e and theirs alot of files and such. His three sons also used it and everything I am not truly sure what made it incredibly slow. I do not think he would be smart enough to cover his tracks if he was using his computer for "innapropriate things". Although the computer is cluttered and not well organized there are also alot of what i feel are uneeded programs. In your oppinion you feel I should just reformat that computer and take out the partition? or should I get a bigger hdd say 500 gb?

 

[mjf]

To add to the advice list, I'd be trying a boot in Safe Mode first loading as little as possible. Also, try a chkdsk from a command prompt and/or use a live boot CD such as Hirens 12. This can do some disk and AV checking.

45minutes to boot
I'd say a clean install with or without a new disk is looking likely.

 

[supermasterpig]

mjf thank you for the advice. I do not usually look at a computer and go "welp its screwd". but in this case i feel like it is its almsot physically impossible to do anything on. I just sit there and twittle my thumbs and watch the kids play gears of war while the thing loads.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

The hard drive and hardware are ok I didnt see any problems. As far as the habits they are the head of a county hunters society or w.e and theirs alot of files and such. His three sons also used it and everything I am not truly sure what made it incredibly slow. I do not think he would be smart enough to cover his tracks if he was using his computer for "innapropriate things". Although the computer is cluttered and not well organized there are also alot of what i feel are uneeded programs. In your oppinion you feel I should just reformat that computer and take out the partition? or should I get a bigger hdd say 500 gb?

You say he has an 80 gig "backup" partition that is full. What is on it?

If it isn't a factory restore partition of some kind, why is the HD split into 2 partitions?

I assume you can't mess with that backup partition and will have to leave it alone. If you know you don't need it, then combine it with the existing 170 C partition. But what would that solve other than generating more free space on C?

Offhand, I don't see why you need a 500 gig HD unless you have reason to believe the existing HD is defective.

I mean--he may eventually run out of space and need a larger HD--but how do you explain a PC that terribly slow with 5 GB of RAM and a C with 170 occupied and 25 free?

Something else is going on and a new hard drive won't solve it if the existing HD is OK.

Why 100 processes? What's using the RAM?

 

[supermasterpig]

The backup partition cant be factory installed its an hp and comes with the recovery drive. And its just all full of back up. I dont know what program they used or what to even do with it. I am lost when it comes to back ups plus they have no clue what program they used to back it up. Theyve used several different programs. I just figured that the computer was running slower since it only had 25 gb left. I need to go back and look at the process's again I didnt study them to hard as it wasnt long before the computer become unresponsive and I could no longer view them.

 

[WindowsStar]

Over 100 processes is out of hand. I usually have about 40.

Look at processes again and rank them by RAM usage.

What are the 4 or 5 things at the top of the list and how much RAM are they using?

@supermasterpig

Your hard drive is not the major issue, yes you may need some clean up but the hard drive most likely has little to do with the slowdown of the computer.

The over 100 processes as ignatzatsonic stated is the issue. You need to boot into safe mode and disable all the processes that are not needed. Most of the time you don't need any of them. The processes that are added by installed software are used to do their updates or make it super easy to launch their software, however all this takes memory and makes your machine SLOW! -WS

 

[ignatzatsonic]

If none of the users can explain what is on the backup partition or why it is even there, then what is the point of it?

If they need backups (whatever that means to them), what good are the "backups" if they are on the same drive as the "originals". If the drive fails, you lose both.

There might be some advantage to deleting the backups partition to make C larger, but I wouldn't expect miracles.

I assume all of their "original" data is on C?

I'd get to the bottom of the processes and RAM issue and continue to consider an infection or extremely poor maintenance.

 

[supermasterpig]

As far as antivirus and malware goes have another idea for a program or are the ones im ussing alright. Ill have to see the computer tom and see if I can look at what process are going. I do know for a fact that only about 2 out of 5 gb of ram is being used by the process's so idk. As far as the back up thing goes its funny because the average american home users are told to always back up their data. but to where? what do I backup? How do I use it? and then you get the problem I am now dealing with. I also ran maintence on it what i could as far as that goes I could only use glary utilities now disk defrag would even begin to boot up.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

As far as antivirus and malware goes have another idea for a program or are the ones im ussing alright. Ill have to see the computer tom and see if I can look at what process are going. I do know for a fact that only about 2 out of 5 gb of ram is being used by the process's so idk. As far as the back up thing goes its funny because the average american home users are told to always back up their data. but to where? what do I backup? How do I use it? and then you get the problem I am now dealing with. I also ran maintence on it what i could as far as that goes I could only use glary utilities now disk defrag would even begin to boot up.

You can go here for a good online scanner:

Free ESET Online Antivirus Scanner

or here:

HouseCall - Free Online Virus Scan - Trend Micro USA

And run Superantispyware or Malware Bytes.

You could well be infected, but runaway processes like you have certainly doesn't mean you are. Try to turn these unneeded process off as mentioned above.

And run your virus scans from safe mode as well.

 

[supermasterpig]

thanks I will try and get to bottom of this hopefully tom. I usually dont like to do this for people other than familiy and I never redo computers that people ask to load full backups on. if they want to keep file sona usb drive until its done fine but I dont know hwo to load a full compressed backup of their computer.