Tech Support Guy banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Slow Computer, Hard drive light constant, fan activity

7K views 14 replies 6 participants last post by  flavallee 
#1 ·
Hello,
I have a HP G60-443CL Notebook, 64 Bit Vista, lately is been slowed down considerably and the fan is running constantly and the hard drive light is almost constant. When I open an application such as browser, after a bit the hard drive begins to run constantly and slows the computer down to a crawl. The fan is always running loud. I do not notice anything under Task manger that appears to be hogging memory, but I may not know quite how to look more extensively. It has become very annoying and quite a hindrance to my work environment. If I try to run more than one application, everything on the computer just slows down tremendously. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
 
#2 ·
With your computer at the desktop and no programs or internet browser running what does it show at the bottom of the Task Manager windows for CPU usage %.
 
#3 ·
Mostly 0% alternating up to 1% or 2%. I removed Norton AV and bought McAfee hoping it would help, but ended up removing both and just using MS security Essentials and MalwareBytes to save resources. It was just too slow with those AV programs.

4GB Ram
 
#6 ·
Let's see this:

Click Start.

In the search bar type msconfig and hit Enter.

Click Startup(tab).

Take a screenshot(s) showing all items listed and attach the image(s) in your next post.

To post a screen shot of the active window, hold the Alt key and press the PrtScn key. Open the Windows PAINT application and Paste the screen shot. You can then use PAINT to trim to suit, and save it as a JPG format file. To upload it to the forum, open the full reply window and use the Manage Attachments button to upload it here.
 
#7 ·
Those temps all look normal so the next step is to test your hard drive.

One other thing, you said nothing appeared in Task Manager to be hogging memory but what is the Memory usage showing when all programs and browser are off.

Follow this guide to test the hard drive.

Identify the make of your hard drive and then use one of the links below to get the manufacturer's diagnostics for ISO (CD) not the one for Windows.
When the download is complete right click the file and select Extract Here and burn the image to a CD.
In Windows 7 right click the extracted file, select Open With, then select Windows Disc Image Burning Tool then follow the prompts. For all other versions of windows (if you do not have an ISO burner) download this free software. isoimageburner
Boot the PC into the Bios setup and set the CD/DVD drive to 1st in the boot sequence. Insert the disk in the drive then reboot and the disc will load into dos.
Excelstore
Hitachi/IBM
Samsung
Seagate, Maxtor & Quantum
Western Digital
Toshiba/Fujitsu
If you have a Toshiba/Fujitsu hard drive I would suggest the use of the diagnostics from the Seagate link as this will work on all makes of drive and on any OS.
 
#11 ·
From the sounds of it, most likely a dying hard drive. Your fan spins constantly because your hard drive is continually being attempted to be accessed and that is causing heat buildup possibly off of mis-reads. Possibly you have bad clusters on it. Your quickest and easiest way to check this is to attempt to hook this hard drive up to a secondary computer (ensure you have antivirus on whatever computer you hook it up to) via external usb. That way, there are no programs/virus running on it. See if you can access the files. IF not, try and format it. If that fails, you got a bad hard drive. The easiest way to accomplish all of this is to buy an external hard drive. I did this when my hard drive crashed, and I keep the Sata adapter so that if I ever need to do some quick troubleshoot, I always have a quick plug n play usb external hard drive adapter. Besides, most likely your hard drive is bad and you can use the new hard drive inside the case for your computer. Just make sure that if you go this route, you purchase the right interface, ie sata, scsi...pata?? I doubt it.
 
#14 ·
Jrw2550 is thinking along the same lines as I was at the start. I would perform the test on your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics. If it comes up clear you will at least have eliminated the hard drive as a possible cause.
 
#15 ·
I removed Norton AV and bought McAfee hoping it would help, but ended up removing both and just using MS security Essentials and MalwareBytes to save resources. It was just too slow with those AV programs.
Not to get off the subject here, but if you've installed and then uninstalled McAfee and Norton, you need to run their removal tools so they can find and remove all the file and registry "debris" that was leftover from their uninstall.

Select one of the "Download @ MajorGeeks" links to download and save:

McAfee Consumer Product Removal Tool 5.0.285.0

Norton Removal Tool 2012.0.0.19

After that's done, close all open windows.

Run each tool and allow it to remove what it finds.

Make sure to restart the computer after running each tool.

--------------------------------------------------------
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top