Computer Suddenly Running Extremely Slowly (20+ mins to log in, 15 and counting to open windows menu)

Grahammophone · May 19, 2017

Hello!

About a week ago my desktop started freezing up and lagging and just generally being useless for even the simplest tasks. It boots fine (well, it sometimes has a drive-read error upon boot, but it's had that problem since the day I built it 5ish years ago, and rebooting a couple times always clears it eventually), but the windows log in screen is a bit laggy compared to usual, and then once I enter my password and actually log in, the fun starts. It takes ~20 minutes for my home screen to display properly and for the computer to be capable of accepting any input other than just moving the mouse cursor around the screen. Once it's sorted that out, if I click on anything, it immediately locks up again (note: windows menu just finally loaded. Took ~25 minutes after I initially clicked it.) for seemingly random time frames (sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes an hour). During these lockup times, it won't accept any further input except, again, moving my mouse cursor around. Even mousing over an icon on my task bar doesn't result in the usual highlighting of the icon. Sometimes if I leave it alone for an hour or so after booting and logging in, it seems to straighten itself out and will accept minor commands (opening menus and windows explorer and the like) in a timely manner, however if I try to run anything substantial, or if I reboot my computer it goes right back to its glacial behaviour.

What I've tried (when the computer has been behaving well enough to allow me to try anything):
- ran a virus scan (avast): came back clean
- ran ccleaner
- stopped any non-essential software from starting upon log in
- stopped any background processes
- checked processor load in task manager: nothing seems to be hogging resources, and both my RAM and CPU load are <10%

System Specs:
OS: Windows 10 Home
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3
CPU: AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 MHz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
RAM: 4X G-Skill 8 Gb Sticks (32 Gb total)
PSU: OCZ 850W Gold
GPU: GTX 960
Case: Phantom 410
Cooling: Cooler Master for my CPU, then 2 intake fans in the front, 1 intake fan on the side, 1 intake fan on the floor, 1 output fan on the back, 2 output fans on the top
Storage: 1 SSD (mostly just OS and other important stuff, plus a couple programs that for some reason refuse to be installed on any other drive but C), 4 HDDs - 2x 120 Gb, 2x 3Tb
Network: D-Link DWA-182C1 dual band external network adapter

History:
Computer was built 5 or so years ago, originally running Windows 7. The motherboard, half the RAM, CPU, PSU, SSD, and the two 120 Gb HDDs are all from that initial build. The CPU cooler, GPU, 3Tb HDDs, and two of the RAM sticks were installed just shy of 2 years ago. I haven't been downloading anything untrustworthy lately, and I'm not aware of any updates that would have taken place around the time my problems began.

Thoughts:
My hunch is that the problem is either Windows 10 being buggy and needing a refresh, or my CPU and/or motherboard reaching the end of their lives and starting to crap out a bit. That being said, I'm pretty new to troubleshooting these sorts of things and figured I would ask for help before I start spending a bunch of money needlessly. I'm really hoping it's not Windows, since I'm unaware of a way to refresh it without it wiping my all my software, some of which I've long since lost the install disks for, and the rest of which would take an ungodly amount of time to redownload and reinstall.

Thanks in advance for any help you folks can give me! Please let me know if I'm missing anything, or if there's any more information I can provide which might help.

Deus Vu1t · May 19, 2017

Grahammophone :

Hello!

About a week ago my desktop started freezing up and lagging and just generally being useless for even the simplest tasks. It boots fine (well, it sometimes has a drive-read error upon boot, but it's had that problem since the day I built it 5ish years ago, and rebooting a couple times always clears it eventually), but the windows log in screen is a bit laggy compared to usual, and then once I enter my password and actually log in, the fun starts. It takes ~20 minutes for my home screen to display properly and for the computer to be capable of accepting any input other than just moving the mouse cursor around the screen. Once it's sorted that out, if I click on anything, it immediately locks up again (note: windows menu just finally loaded. Took ~25 minutes after I initially clicked it.) for seemingly random time frames (sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes an hour). During these lockup times, it won't accept any further input except, again, moving my mouse cursor around. Even mousing over an icon on my task bar doesn't result in the usual highlighting of the icon. Sometimes if I leave it alone for an hour or so after booting and logging in, it seems to straighten itself out and will accept minor commands (opening menus and windows explorer and the like) in a timely manner, however if I try to run anything substantial, or if I reboot my computer it goes right back to its glacial behaviour.

What I've tried (when the computer has been behaving well enough to allow me to try anything):
- ran a virus scan (avast): came back clean
- ran ccleaner
- stopped any non-essential software from starting upon log in
- stopped any background processes
- checked processor load in task manager: nothing seems to be hogging resources, and both my RAM and CPU load are <10%

System Specs:
OS: Windows 10 Home
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3
CPU: AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 MHz, 4 cores, 8 logical processors
RAM: 4X G-Skill 8 Gb Sticks (32 Gb total)
PSU: OCZ 850W Gold
GPU: GTX 960
Case: Phantom 410
Cooling: Cooler Master for my CPU, then 2 intake fans in the front, 1 intake fan on the side, 1 intake fan on the floor, 1 output fan on the back, 2 output fans on the top
Storage: 1 SSD (mostly just OS and other important stuff, plus a couple programs that for some reason refuse to be installed on any other drive but C), 4 HDDs - 2x 120 Gb, 2x 3Tb
Network: D-Link DWA-182C1 dual band external network adapter

History:
Computer was built 5 or so years ago, originally running Windows 7. The motherboard, half the RAM, CPU, PSU, SSD, and the two 120 Gb HDDs are all from that initial build. The CPU cooler, GPU, 3Tb HDDs, and two of the RAM sticks were installed just shy of 2 years ago. I haven't been downloading anything untrustworthy lately, and I'm not aware of any updates that would have taken place around the time my problems began.

Thoughts:
My hunch is that the problem is either Windows 10 being buggy and needing a refresh, or my CPU and/or motherboard reaching the end of their lives and starting to crap out a bit. That being said, I'm pretty new to troubleshooting these sorts of things and figured I would ask for help before I start spending a bunch of money needlessly. I'm really hoping it's not Windows, since I'm unaware of a way to refresh it without it wiping my all my software, some of which I've long since lost the install disks for, and the rest of which would take an ungodly amount of time to redownload and reinstall.

Thanks in advance for any help you folks can give me! Please let me know if I'm missing anything, or if there's any more information I can provide which might help.

Sheesh, that really sucks.

What I would do is whilst booting the PC, hold F8 to access boot options. From there, you can see which components are running well, overheating, stable etc. If you have a spare HDD, just take out your current one, or move your important files somewhere else.

Lets say tha didnt work. By sheer luck, do you think you or someone close to you would have an unused AM3+ CPU or do you know someone who could borrow you one, or even somewhere you could get one cheap?

Is the OS the only thing that has really been hit badly performance wise? Try moving Windows from SSD to HDD to see if maybe your SSD is dying.

If all else fails, its probably you Motherboard. If you dont want to upgrade your CPU ( Ryzen, Kabylake) I'd pick up an AM3+ Mobo. The cheapest ones are about £30 ($50).

Good luck and I hope I was of some assistance

Grahammophone · May 19, 2017

Deus Vu1t :

Thanks for your reply!

Alas, F8 doesn't seem to do anything on boot. The internet said that Shift+Restart accomplishes the same thing, so I tried that, but there doesn't seem to be any options to check the status of the components. The only spare component I have lying about is a new PSU from when my current one was looking like it might die last year before magically resurrecting itself. As for borrowing a CPU from a friend, my friends are generally less tech-savvy than I am (and that is not very) and as such don't tend to have components lying around their homes. I'm also a student, so I'd really prefer not to have to drop $100 on a cheap CPU just for testing things out, and which might not actually solve the problem.

It's not just the OS that is slow; it's everything. For example, when the computer was in a mostly-functioning mood I tried to update a game stored on one of the other drives (usually takes 2-5 minutes), only to come back 12 hours later to find it was only 16% done. Similarly, I can't seem to get it to update the GPU drivers through GeForce Experience like I normally can.

As much as I would love to upgrade my CPU, and was thinking of scraping together the money for a Ryzen in the near future anyway, those dreams were crushed when I did some research and found out that I would also have to upgrade my RAM to DDR4 and my motherboard to an AM4 model.

Starting to think I may have to bite the bullet and try refreshing windows and/or swapping the motherboard (which I believe means I have to reinstall windows anyway), then start the process of enraging my ISP as I try to download everything again, assuming that even fixes things of course.

Deus Vu1t · May 19, 2017

Try to tap F8 repeatedly.

Grahammophone · May 19, 2017

I've tried holding it, tapping it, and shift+F8. No dice. Pressing F8 at all (or F11 for that matter) during boot just seems to guarantee that I get that annoying disk read error every single time.

Grahammophone · May 19, 2017

Ended up biting the bullet and refreshing Windows and that seems to have resolved whatever nonsense was going on. Thank you for your help!

Edit: spoke too soon. Definitely still broken.

Deus Vu1t · May 20, 2017

[/quotemsg]
Thanks for your reply!

Alas, F8 doesn't seem to do anything on boot. The internet said that Shift+Restart accomplishes the same thing, so I tried that, but there doesn't seem to be any options to check the status of the components. The only spare component I have lying about is a new PSU from when my current one was looking like it might die last year before magically resurrecting itself. As for borrowing a CPU from a friend, my friends are generally less tech-savvy than I am (and that is not very) and as such don't tend to have components lying around their homes. I'm also a student, so I'd really prefer not to have to drop $100 on a cheap CPU just for testing things out, and which might not actually solve the problem.

It's not just the OS that is slow; it's everything. For example, when the computer was in a mostly-functioning mood I tried to update a game stored on one of the other drives (usually takes 2-5 minutes), only to come back 12 hours later to find it was only 16% done. Similarly, I can't seem to get it to update the GPU drivers through GeForce Experience like I normally can.

As much as I would love to upgrade my CPU, and was thinking of scraping together the money for a Ryzen in the near future anyway, those dreams were crushed when I did some research and found out that I would also have to upgrade my RAM to DDR4 and my motherboard to an AM4 model.

Starting to think I may have to bite the bullet and try refreshing windows and/or swapping the motherboard (which I believe means I have to reinstall windows anyway), then start the process of enraging my ISP as I try to download everything again, assuming that even fixes things of course.[/quotemsg]

I really sympathize with you and it seems you're in a pretty crappy situation. I'm afraid that I don't know what is causing this and your best bet is probably to just freshly install windows and see if its software/hardware related. As for the future, if by luck it is not hardware related (which I think it isnt since components usually just die instead of becoming really really weak), try and sell your CPU + Mobo + Ram before it goes down in value and pick yourself up a nice R5 1400/1500x. I wish I could send you my spare FX 4300 but I live in UK :/ . Just go ahead and fresh install everything and hopefully you'll be fine

Migwans · Sep 11, 2017

Grahammophone :

Hi there! I have been working on my friend's computer for a while now, and your description fits his to a T. It became so slow it was unuseable. Like you, we built this around 5 years ago. Last night after reading this thread I did a bit more research and stumbled across an article on How-To-Geek regarding the Windows utility sfc /scannow, System File Checker. I did run it on an elevated command prompt (took over an hour to get the computer to that point). This has made a huge difference! There are still issues, but the computer is now functional enough that I can work with it. The utility produces a CBS log that will show you what's wrong, including files it doesn't fix. My next step is to reduce the number of programs and files on the drive, run sfc again and eventually clone the HDD to a SSD. I was unable to do this before due to "bad sectors". I should mention that early on in this process I did CCleaner, Malwarbytes, etc., and did remove a Trojan. Not sure if that did the damage or the last major Windows 10 update, or both.

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