Extremely slow computer, HDD related?

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ianhuysman

ianhuysman

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Sep 23, 2015
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I have an older computer I got for free, after installing windows 7 and all the drivers, I noticed the computer was extremely slow, opening chrome takes more than 30 seconds, opening a 5 page PDF file takes a whole minute, and while it's opening I can hear the hard drive going crazy. Also it takes about 20 minitues until the computer is fully "booted" After doing a diskbenchmark (HD Tune Pro) the average reading speed was about 24MB/sec (see screenshot below). Could anyone tell me if it's HDD related or not?

Screenshot HD Tune Pro: http://imgur.com/a/m79QJ
 
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ianhuysman
So a quick update, I bought a new HDD (WD Blue 1TB, 7.2K RPM) and an extra 4GB of ram. I also did a fresh install of Windows 10. And now the system is working fine, no stuttering or horrible loading times anymore. Thanks for all your help guys!
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ianhuysman

ianhuysman

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Never heard of DRAM, if you mean RAM, it's 4GB. Could it be related to the amout of RAM? It only used around 55-60% during the benchmark

 
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neiler0847

neiler0847

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Mar 25, 2015
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There are a lot of system services that get executed when Windows starts up. In my experience, a slow HDD really hampers these. My 5-year old DELL laptop was performing similarly to your description. Replacing the HDD with an SSD made an incredible difference.

4 GB of memory is also a bare minimum. If the Windows services are forced to page out to disk because of low memory, the situation is compounded.

While the machine is in its 20-minute boot-up period, launch the Windows Task Manager and see what's going on resource-wise. You will likely see that the HDD is at 100%. Also check the memory utilization.

My prediction is that an SSD (and probably another 4 GB of RAM) will rejuvenate your machine.

You didn't mention mention whether it is a desktop or a laptop, or what the CPU is. These will dictate the ease and value of doing any upgrades.


 
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ko888

ko888

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DRAM = Dynamic RAM. The memory modules installed in the memory slots on the motherboard.

If there is an insufficient amount of DRAM the system will use the HDD as temporary (a.k.a. virtual) storage (i.e. the page file). If the DRAM insufficiency is large enough you will run into disk thrashing where the paging in and out from DRAM to HDD is so severe that the system is unusable until the thrashing has subsided.

Post your full system specifications.
 
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ianhuysman

ianhuysman

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So I disabled the paging file, so windows won't use my HDD instead of the RAM, still same results. After that I did another benchmark with a 2nd HDD that is working fine, these were the results for the 2nd hard drive: http://imgur.com/a/aLOPr
This looks a lot better than the one from my primairy drive if you ask me
 
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Phillip Corcoran

Phillip Corcoran

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If it's an old PC with an equally old HDD, it may be heavily fragmented and that would definitely affect it's overall performance, read/write speeds.

Try running the Disk Defragmenter on the said drive and leave the PC alone while it's defragging. May take a while if it hasn't been done for some time.

(Ignore all the above if you have just recently re-formatted the boot partition and re-installed Windows on it)

Regarding the amount of RAM for general use on 32-bit Windows 7, 4GB is ample, not a bare minimum. I can attest to that, and it doesn't mean virtual memory will be heavily used (not for general PC usage anyway). In any case, 4GB is the max you can use with 32-bit Windows. I never get any disk-thrashing on mine, not even when editing hi-res DSLR images in Photoshop, editing processes are done within seconds.
 
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ko888

ko888

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That's a normal looking graph and is what should be expected.

Did you run any disk diagnostics (i.e. Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics) on your primary drive?

https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=en
 
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ianhuysman

ianhuysman

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First I analyzed my disk, it's about 4% fragmented, shouldn't give much problems I guess.
Next I ran a quick disk scan using Western Digital's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics, no problem found there. I could run a full test later
 
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ianhuysman

ianhuysman

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Sep 23, 2015
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So a quick update, I bought a new HDD (WD Blue 1TB, 7.2K RPM) and an extra 4GB of ram. I also did a fresh install of Windows 10. And now the system is working fine, no stuttering or horrible loading times anymore. Thanks for all your help guys!
 
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