computer freezing too much now!!

tonyheaney

beauf wrote: »

I think he should image the drive to a ssd. Then do a factory reset. Remove all the software that gets preinstalled.

I've an old disk in my test PC and it crawls but only when using the disk. Once everything is loaded is quick enough.

What's the spec of this machine does it ha 4gb of ram?

Did you run crystal mark that someone suggested earlier.

How? Putting in the second hdd was trial and error and was all but about giving up on the machine.

tonyheaney

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If the machine is from 2010, it may just have 2GB of ram? Using Chrome on 2GB of Ram is painful, can only have one or two tabs open before it just essentially locks up periodically.

Since i bought the computer i have had no issue with slowness or chrome. There was I believe 3 gbs of Ram from day one. I understand software updates its self and eventually becomes bloated such as chrome that has about 10 processes running in back ground. would buying 2 sticks of 8GB RAM make any difference?

even right clicking is becoming a pain in the ass

beauf

tonyheaney wrote: »

...Beauf what would happen if i disconnected the main HDD with windows 7 and let the computer turn on with the second hdd installed where it is with nothing but movies???....

Re-install Windows (even the 90 day demo) on the new drive. If this works ok then the problem is with the HD. If it doesn't then the old drive is fine and you need to look at something else.

To be honest I think its all beyond you technically. I would bring it to someone/where and get them to look at it.

2, 3 or 8GB of RAM isn't the cause of the problem you are having.

tonyheaney

yes im surprised i managed to install the second hdd, i was going to throw that one out (only have it less then a year when it died.) so i at least have all my movies recovered and accessible not. And i mean classic stuff not the crap they are spouting out today.

Regarding Re-install Windows (even the 90 day demo)? and To be honest I think its all beyond you technically.

I am a fast learner once i have the instructions in front of me but when i reinstall i am never given an option where to reinstall. i did a full reset last week AGAIN

as for the 90 day install i never seen that

beauf

Forget about the movie drive its old news.
Forget about the re-install as it will have no effect if its hardware issue, and you've not made any changes to the hardware between resets. So its pointless doing resets.

Download a live CD. Create a live CD. Then boot from it. See if you can browse the web with no crashes using the live CD. Don't install the live CD, you don't need to do that.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Bayberry

tonyheaney wrote: »

I am a fast learner once i have the instructions in front of me but when i reinstall i am never given an option where to reinstall. i did a full reset last week AGAIN

as for the 90 day install i never seen that

What he is suggesting is that you move everything that's on the 2nd hard drive off it and install an Evaluation version of Windows (You can't get a Windows 7 eval any more, only 8.1 and 10 - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ )

Beauf seems to think that if everything work after you do this, it'll prove that the problem was with the original hard drive itself. (I don't agree, there are far easier ways to test a hard drive).

If you open Task Manager before you fire up chrome, and select the Performance tab, what does the CPU graph and the memory usage graph look like once you fire up Chrome?

beauf

What I'm suggesting is not testing the hard drive. Rather the opposite. Its testing the rest of the hardware with a different OS.

Its like splitting a deck of cards. You're testing 50% then the other 50%. its quicker than testing each component individually.

beauf

Bayberry wrote: »

....If you open Task Manager before you fire up chrome, and select the Performance tab, what does the CPU graph and the memory usage graph look like once you fire up Chrome?

I'm curious what you're expecting here. On my machine with 3.25GB of RAM if I open up Chrome and a 3 tabs, boards, the verge, RTE it goes from 20% to 38%. Must try the same on my 2GB machine.

Bayberry

beauf wrote: »

I'm curious what you're expecting here. On my machine with 3.25GB of RAM if I open up Chrome and a 3 tabs, boards, the verge, RTE it goes from 20% to 38%. Must try the same on my 2GB machine.

Your machine isn't the one having problems.

beauf

Yes but what are you looking for?

A live CD won't have any bloat or browser plugins, or extra utilities thats are slowing the machine down.

Tony, what have you installed since you reset windows?

Bayberry

beauf wrote: »

Yes but what are you looking for?

To see if his system is CPU bound, or disk bound, or memory bound.

You know, the basic information that you need to figure out where the underlying problem might be.

A live CD won't have any bloat or browser plugins, or extra utilities thats are slowing the machine down.

And it won't tell him whether there's a problem with his hard drive either. So unless you're suggesting that he just keep using the LiveCD, and give up on Windows altogether, it's not clear what purpose it serve.

beauf

If you don't get the purpose of Live CD. Nothing I say will explain it.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/31804/the-10-cleverest-ways-to-use-linux-to-fix-your-windows-pc/

There’s a number of ways that you can use Ubuntu to diagnose hardware problems, but the first is really obvious once you think about it—just boot off the Live CD, and start running some applications and test out all the hardware from a working Linux environment. If the system works fine in Linux, the problem is probably a Windows, virus, or driver issue.

(or the HD)

tonyheaney

beauf wrote: »

What I'm suggesting is not testing the hard drive. Rather the opposite. Its testing the rest of the hardware with a different OS.

Its like splitting a deck of cards. You're testing 50% then the other 50%. its quicker than testing each component individually.

I actually put windows 10 on the system which is why I required the new reformat. The graphics were all wrong. No matter how i did it, change it, did what ever i could to it the screen looked stretched, everything was either too small or too large. the screen seemed to oddly to hurt my eyes, Does that part make sense? changing the screen to suit me on 7 i could do in my sleep so 10 wasn't to hard to figure out, but i went back to 7. I did like the look of 10 but nothing felt right.

tonyheaney

beauf wrote: »

Yes but what are you looking for?

A live CD won't have any bloat or browser plugins, or extra utilities thats are slowing the machine down.

Tony, what have you installed since you reset windows?

since reset

the old reliables such as:

• utorrent,
• AC3Filter 2.6.0b
• AVG 2015 free version 30 day trial
• Dropbox
• Gom Player

New to 2015 June onwards:

• Bluestacks
• Kibi but haven't used it on 7 yet as the system was slow on 10

tonyheaney

I am really thankful for all your advice and help so far guys, this is the system information if it help at all:

tonyheaney

my current app status:

tonyheaney

beauf

You can make Windows 8 or 10 look like 7 using a tool like Classic Shell. Some might argue you should learn Win10 interface instead. I'm on the fence. I use Classic shell on one machine, but not on another.

Was the machine slow before you installed them. I stopped using AVG because I felt it slowed down my older machine machines too much even disabling the link scanner and things like that.

I think Windows 8 and 10 use the hard drive a lot more than Win 7 and earlier. One of my machines has a slow HD and windows 8 and 10 really crawl on it. Theres a ton of possibilities for this,

https://www.google.ie/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=windows%2010%20disk%20usage%20100

On my main machine (9yrs old) I just put in a SSD and now it works fine. Even with 3GB of RAM.

beauf

You're installing a lot of software there. Much of which has the potential to cause issues. I would install anything you don't use. Checking you don't need any of it for features of the laptop. Then go through all the services and and startup apps and see which ones can be turned off until you need them.

tonyheaney

beauf wrote: »

You can make Windows 8 or 10 look like 7 using a tool like Classic Shell. Some might argue you should learn Win10 interface instead. I'm on the fence. I use Classic shell on one machine, but not on another.

Was the machine slow before you installed them. I stopped using AVG because I felt it slowed down my older machine machines too much even disabling the link scanner and things like that.

I think Windows 8 and 10 use the hard drive a lot more than Win 7 and earlier. One of my machines has a slow HD and windows 8 and 10 really crawl on it. Theres a ton of possibilities for this,

https://www.google.ie/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=windows%2010%20disk%20usage%20100

On my main machine (9yrs old) I just put in a SSD and now it works fine. Even with 3GB of RAM.

What antivirus software do you use now? The machine only started to get slow i think in and around Jan/Feb this year.

tonyheaney

beauf wrote: »

You're installing a lot of software there. Much of which has the potential to cause issues. I would install anything you don't use. Checking you don't need any of it for features of the laptop. Then go through all the services and and startup apps and see which ones can be turned off until you need them.

LOL Its a Desktop Pc, but yes i will start doing that

shanec1928

Your amd processor is always going to be slow anyway..

beauf

tonyheaney wrote: »

LOL Its a Desktop Pc, but yes i will start doing that

Sorry I keep forgetting. There may be media buttons on your keyboard etc. Personally I would loose all the HP stuff, all the demo's, the MS live stuff. Any web apps which load at startup I would switch to only loading when started.

Last time I tested them, I thought Avast was the best compromise in terms of slowing a machine down, and detection but you might have to mess with it to get rid of the ads. Which can be a problem with it.

beauf

shanec1928 wrote: »

Your amd processor is always going to be slow anyway..

It not quick for sure, but its actually faster than my laptop, so shouldn't have problems with browsing the web. Or freezing. My laptop was getting painful till I put a SSD in it.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=128&cmp[]=927

That said if I was you, I'd start thinking of a replacement at some point.

tonyheaney

re: replacement Thats what i am thinking however there is one small issue that's holding that back. MY Wife LOL :D:D

You see we have a TV/UPC in the house but since they went to china for the summer the UPC has been turned off. I have no use for it. its really there for the kids.

the computer is the source of entertainment for me, I'm Irish my wife is Chinese and my shows are american and hers is Chinese.

I figure if i am to get a new machine i need one that can with stand the assault of being on for longer extended hours. My current PC is sometimes on for 20 days, whether its work related or family use.

correct me if i am wrong and i probably am, If i buy a gaming machine and i pump say 600/700 in to the tower alone, with high end graphics card and ram included will i be getting a worthwhile work horse of a pc we can all depend on? I more then likely wont play games on as we have an X-box 360 so the PC would be internet/downloading/uploading use only

beauf

All PCs should be able to be on extended hours. I think if you got a SSD installed in that machine you'd get another year or more out of it. if you get to the bottom of whatever is the problem with it at the moment.

tonyheaney

guys, Do you randomly get the USB disconnect sound? while i have mouse and keyboard only connected i have heard the USB disconnect sound for no good reason

cerastes

MiskyBoyy wrote: »

Could possibly be the main HDD is starting to fail. Download a program called crystal disk info to check the health of your current drive.

I've been following this thread with interest, I started a similar thread in relation to very similar problems with my laptop.
I'm going to review the thread I started and follow some of the advice here, I'd really like to pin down what's causing my very similar problems, tediously and painfully slow functioning of my laptop.
From my thread, there are a few laptops in the house, so i have a spare laptop with ubuntu on it to use, and as of today when my win 7 laptop is annoyingly unresponsive (also keeps throwing upmerror messages saying failure to run scripts which it did before the full reinstall too).
I never got the time to follow up the advice from the thread i started due to being too busy but the main laptop is just getting too slow, I did a full backup of my information to an external HDD, then did a complete reinstall, again after having some issues running the back up discs which would not initially work.

I've the free offer to upgrade to win 10 but until I resolve the current problem I see no reason to create more problems.

beauf wrote: »

I think he should image the drive to a ssd. Then do a factory reset. Remove all the software that gets preinstalled.

I've an old disk in my test PC and it crawls but only when using the disk. Once everything is loaded is quick enough.

What's the spec of this machine does it ha 4gb of ram?

Did you run crystal mark that someone suggested earlier.

I was advised in the thread I started to get an ssd, I'm thinking of that or even a replacement data HDD, and increased ram, but I'd prefer test what the problem is rather than just swapping out parts till it stops giving problems.
I've tried Ubuntu and have it on my other laptop which I hardly use as I prefer windows as much as hate to say that 😤
Ive also a small tablet which im using now but it is just useful for going online and not really doing any real work and especially not typing anything.

Bayberry wrote: »

Computers can get flakey for any number of reasons, from software to hardware. But when you've already had issues like this, I'd definitely consider that the power supply in your house isn't very smooth, and that the power supply in your PC may be damaged, or just not able to deal with the variations on the line.

Other hardware problems that can cause the symptoms that you've described are a very dusty environment, so that crud build up on the fan and heatsink, so that the CPU overheats (you've already had the case open to stick in the 2nd HDD - did you notice a lot of dust?).

Besides HDD issues, you can also have issues with RAM that only kick in when there's a bunch of stuff loading and a lot of things are being moved in and out of RAM quickly.

Unfortunately, pinning these things down can be tricky. You can get free s/w for testing both the HDD and the RAM, and you can get tools that will report on the temperature of the CPU and motherboard, if the motherboard supports that. But there really isn't any free way to test a dodgey power supply. Besides the external HDD, have you had other electronic devices in the house break, or seem to be slightly less reliable for you than they are for your friends?

If you've done factory installs more than once, and the problem persists, it's probably not a software issue, (and likely not a HDD issue).

What free test software are you talking about? Where to get it?

beauf

cerastes wrote: »

I...I was advised in the thread I started to get an ssd, I'm thinking of that or even a replacement data HDD, and increased ram, but I'd prefer test what the problem is rather than just swapping out parts till it stops giving problems...

Swapping out parts IS a test. Crude, but quick. Its basic problem solving. Split the problem in half, then half again.

SSD will make the most difference to most people. Unless you are doing something specialized or have some other requirement.

A lot of people on these threads, want to take the longest route to fix problems. I have no idea why.

Bayberry

cerastes wrote: »

What free test software are you talking about? Where to get it?

Most HDD manufacturers provide some testing tools, but they are usually tied to their own drives. This article provides links to a number of different drive testing tools.

For RAM testing, Memtest or Memtest86+ are the standard tools.