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  1. Member
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    One of my computers running Windows 7 has started running very slowly all of a sudden. Things like a scan using ccleaner take a really long time to complete. I thought maybe the hard drive is going (it's not SSD) so I ran some hard drive health utility programs and nothing came up to indicate any problem. What else could be the cause. Tried rebooting of course, can't see any resource hungry programs running.. Could the hard drive still be going even if utilities show no issues?
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  2. Check CPU temperature.
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  3. Member darkknight145's Avatar
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    Check available hard drive space, updates that may have been installed at the time the slowness started happening.
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  4. Member
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    what antivirus software do you use ??
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  5. Member
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    Checked CPU temperature and it's fine. Plenty of hard drive space, not using antivirus, but did a scan with malwarebytes and it didn't detect anything. The thing is just sluggish as heck! I updated all drivers with drivereasy too. Very strange. I'll check fragmented status tomorrow.
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  6. Member
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    Open Task Manager and check what Processes are running and research everything you don't recognize the name of. Not everything that's installed without your knowledge will be tagged as malware. This is especially true if you're using prebuilt PC.
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  7. If CPU Temp is ok then i would check memory usage, hdd activity (also for errors, dying HDD frequently begin to respond sluggishly), unwanted heavy usage background process (cryptocoin-mining, malicious software, web browsers scripts, pages).
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  8. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    use something like crystaldiscinfo (it's free)to check the s.m.ar.t. values of your hard drives. a drive starting to fail can cause slow downs.

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    "a lot of people are better dead" - prisoner KSC2-303
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  9. Member
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    Check your PSU voltages. I had a lot of flaky problems with my computer when the PSU started to fail.
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  10. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    I use the freeware version of HWInfo. It gives lots of information, voltages, etc., about a PC: https://www.hwinfo.com/download/
    Also you can try the freeware CPUID for MB info: https://cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

    And I would never run a PC connected to the Internet without at least a free anti-virus and a decent router. Windows Defender is useless, IMO.

    If all else fails and it appears to be software or OS related, save your files and do a re-install of Windows. Cures a lot of software problems.

    Hardware related, maybe replace it with a refurbished PC.
    Lots of them on the market for economy prices if you don't need a custom or new PC as a replacement.

    And good luck.
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  11. Member
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    I decided to get an SSD so I'm going to install that and see if it fixes this issue. It certainly can't hurt. Will update after that's up and running.
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  12. Member
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    Did you recently download the W7 "SP-2" update ?
    Losing one's sense of humor....
    is nothing to laugh at.
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  13. Member
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    mikel, no, I didn't recently download SP2.
    Update: The SSD made a huuuuge difference, I think perhaps the other hard drive was going, even though there was no indication of a problem in any of the analysis software.

    I attempted to use Clonezilla to copy the drive, but it didn't work for me, gave me some kind of mismatch error that I didn't know how to deal with. Instead, I used this software which worked perfectly: https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

    All good now, thanks for the replies!
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  14. Banned
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    I take it you went to msconfig and disabled startup programs to see if that would help.
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  15. Member
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    Yeah I went through all the typical stuff
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