Laptop slows down, hdd make buzzing noise.

michaeLie

Honorable
Oct 9, 2013
3
0
10,510
Hey guys, im new on this forum so go easy on me :)
So straight to the problem, my 2,5 years old Acer 4235 went really slow after it failed to wake up from hibernate state. It took forever to login to desktop, and everytime i succeed to made it to the desktop, this message "Catalyst Control Center : Monitoring program has stopped working" always came out. I did clean my fan because i think its overheating, but the problem still occur. Did disk defrag too but not showing any problem. And also now im hearing some kind of buzzing noise "bzzt bzzt" from the hd. And also sometimes my lcd went messed up (like broken lcd). is this means that my hdd need to be replace? considering it 2.5 years old already.
Hope you guys can help. (and sorry for my bad english) >.<
 
Solution
I'll suggest downloading and running CoreTemp which will allow you to monitor temps in your system. Heat is truly the bane of laptops (all computers) and once a laptop has overheated (to the point of shutdown), it takes some time for it to recover (if it ever does). Often, the thermal sensors take time to reset themselves.
First thing here, I will suggest replacing the thermal compound on the heatsink (Arctic Silver 5 is a popular compound although it has a curing time - I prefer IC-Diamond 7, no cure time). It can wait though, I think your HHD is a higher priority
The Catalyst Control Center issue may be simply because part of the program is/was on a bad HDD sector, I will suggest uninstalling it and then re-installing, see if your...
First I will congratulate you, at 2 1/2 years old, your Acer laptop has lasted about a year longer than either of mine.
Did you disassemble the laptop and clean the heatsink/fan? If not I will suggest doing that, there should be YouTube vids to show how for your model. If you did that, did you replace the thermal compound on the heatsink and any thermal pads?
The hard drive noise I'll attribute to the hard drive getting ready to fail (consider backing-up data and replacement possibilities) which can also explain some slowness
 

michaeLie

Honorable
Oct 9, 2013
3
0
10,510
yeah..didn't expect it will last 2,5 years, considering this is my first laptop XD
yes, i just clean the fan, but not replacing the thermal compound.
i'm cleaning the fan just want to see if my laptop problem is from the dust that covered the fan, but nothing changed. laptop still slows down.
and about the hdd, yes i did backup all my important data to my external hdd.
Oh, and then i'm using the app that help to detect if the hdd got problem. i'm using crystal disk info app, and the result, my hdd is in the "CAUTION" state. is this enough to jump to conclusion that all my problem is from the hdd failure? and about the catalyst control center stopped working, is that from hdd failure too? or just maybe, not only my hdd, but also there's something wrong with my video card too?
 
I'll suggest downloading and running CoreTemp which will allow you to monitor temps in your system. Heat is truly the bane of laptops (all computers) and once a laptop has overheated (to the point of shutdown), it takes some time for it to recover (if it ever does). Often, the thermal sensors take time to reset themselves.
First thing here, I will suggest replacing the thermal compound on the heatsink (Arctic Silver 5 is a popular compound although it has a curing time - I prefer IC-Diamond 7, no cure time). It can wait though, I think your HHD is a higher priority
The Catalyst Control Center issue may be simply because part of the program is/was on a bad HDD sector, I will suggest uninstalling it and then re-installing, see if your message doesn't go away then. With your HDD in the "caution" state, replacement should be a fairly high priority, and to that end I will suggest replacing the HDD with an SSD (the difference will amaze you) if a ~180+GB SSD can be budgeted.
I'd say start with replacing the HDD, see what kind of performance you get back. If still lagging, replace the thermal compound on the CPU.
There is a possibility that the graphics card got overheated and will cause issues (not uncommon) but go with the HDD/SSD and thermal compound first, I'd think you'd be good then
 
Solution

michaeLie

Honorable
Oct 9, 2013
3
0
10,510
hmmm i think i'm gonna go for the HDD first and try to go along with your suggestion :D Hope my lptop will stay much longer until i change the hdd before it totally dead X( bcause until now, i still able to use my laptop, but with many app/program crashed and took forever to start up.
Thank you so much for your help :D got many information there. really appreciate it.