[Darken1]

I have been using windows vista ultimate 64-bit for about 6 months now, I keep it up to date and clean it often. The other day I was updating and cleaning my PC. I installed the latest Nvidia 190.38 driver for my GTX295, then used glary utilities, advanced system care free and smart defrag. After all of these my computer got very slow taking close to 7 mins just to start windows.

I thought that maybe the cleaning software had messed up my registry so I did a full format of my drive reinstalled windows and started with a clean slate. I first installed all of the new drivers, mother board and graphics card. Then proceeded to install all of my other software. One of the problems from before the format was that fire fox would stop responding and take forever to load. Now after the format I could go to all of the software websites and load pages and download files with no problem. I got all of my software from filehippo.com and downloads.com. I then proceeded to install all of my video games let it run all night while it installed my steam games. The next afternoon everything was working fine until I started to install gears of war. My computer sat there decompressing the install files for 4 hours and the loading bar never moved. I restarted before this install and when the loading bar stopped I could still operate the entire computer I could go to my start menu and everything but gears of war would not install.

I restarted the computer and tried again and again it stopped at decompressing for hours. Firefox and exeplorer.exe now also become (not responsive) every five seconds.

Any ideas because I am out, all online support for slow and unresponsive always point to a virus, or malware. They suggest repairing windows and running virus scans.

I completely reinstalled windows, scanned any file I was importing from the previous install with two different anti-virus programs.

All I can think is that the Nvidia driver is doing it or my hard drive is crap. I looked online for finding out if your hard drive is bad and all I found was obvious stuff like the drive is making loud noises or windows isn't loading.

I am planning on reinstalling windows again from a clean slate and going with the old 186.18 Nvidia driver but I have never had any issues with nvidia before, and it seems strange that the drivers would work fine for a day then just stop all of the sudden.

Also I had done all of windows updates as well and had service pack 2 installed.

Any help would be great,
Thanks.

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Hi,

I think like you say at this point infection is very unlikely.

Can you tell me the make and model of your hard drive? Most have diagnostics software we can use to determine the overall quality of the drive.

On the driver front, can you roll back the driver?
For example go Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Device Manager

Then like for your graphics card in that list and double click it. Go to the driver tab and see if roll back driver is available.
If it is click the button and see if the system improves.

[rev_olie]

Hi,

I think like you say at this point infection is very unlikely.

Can you tell me the make and model of your hard drive? Most have diagnostics software we can use to determine the overall quality of the drive.

On the driver front, can you roll back the driver?
For example go Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Device Manager

Then like for your graphics card in that list and double click it. Go to the driver tab and see if roll back driver is available.
If it is click the button and see if the system improves.

[Darken1]

My hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS.

As for the driver I was going to try that what I had done was I went into
control panel\programs and features and uninstalled all the nvidia graphics drivers.

Then tried to install the 186.16 driver again but since I ran that driver I can't even boot windows.

[rev_olie]

It wont boot?

Ok then im presuming there is a hardware issue somewhere.

Drive Diagnostics

Ok download SeaTools from HERE. This will run regardless of the system booting up however you will need to have another PC to download and burn the software.

After downloading download ImgBurn from HERE then using the SeaTools download read This Article on how to create a bootable disk.

Insert the newly created boot disk and follow These Instructions

If you run into difficulty and the disk doesn't boot read This Article

Any other problems just post back.

Now you said the system doesn't boot? What happens eg is there just a flashing cursor or an error of some sort?

Edited by rev_olie, 30 July 2009 - 08:18 AM.

[Darken1]

It loads windows to the green loading bar at the beginning of vista and then just freezes there it sat there for 20 mins until I just turned it off. I tried it through safe mode as well and no luck their either it just sits there. No errors

[rev_olie]

Ok then seems like a system problem.

Firstly run the drive diagnostics.

Then follow This Guide on how to repair Windows Vista.

It shouldn't remove any of your personal files but I cannot guarantee this. If you are concerned then let me know and i will walk you through steps to recover data

[Darken1]

I first ran that seatool program, I did a long test whihc ran for about 30 mins then a screen came up saying to take the disk out and press ctrl+alt+del, no idea wiether it passed or failed.

I am not sure what to do now, I did a start up repair to get back into windows, using my windows vista ultimate disk. It sat for about 45 mins until it finally said that it couldn't repair windows start up. I don't remember the exact message but that was the over all statement.

So I restarted my computer and after about 3 mins the logon screen to vista finally load, even though the repair said it failed. So I got into vista and everything was still going slow as ever I completley removed all my nvidia display drivers, physx, graphics and made sure to remove the driver through device manager.

After another restart I loaded back up and it was still going insanely slow and becoming unresponsive. So I checked all of my start up programs to make sure only the necessary programs ran at start up, still no improvement. So I tried removing other devices and programs that I installed the second time around the time the pc started to get slow, like my raid drivers for the motherboard, which I was really hoping was the problem, and software for headphones and my mouse(razer lechesis: if it helps, because it does have a program that runs on start up). Still no help though.

So I ran the seatool again this time with a short test which was in no way short, it ran for 2 hours before I aborted it and the same message came up telling me to take the disk out and press ctrl+alt+del.

After that I went back into windows and ran sfc /scannow to check my windows files to make sure they were not currupt. It ran until it hit 87%, and then game me the message "Windows resource protection could not preform the requested operation."

Then I started to think, the first time my computer got slow I had just run a defrag. The second time I had a day with no lag and the next day I had installed at least 100gb of information and was installing a 12gb game when it started to slow down again. I am really thinking that it might be the hard drive.

I am going to run seatool long test again over night and see what I get.

I hope that you can respond to this and give me some feed back tomorrow because I am out of ideas and patients.

Thanks for all of the help you have given me so far I am thinking if nothing works over the week end I will just order a new hard drive this time from Western digital(have had three of their laptop hard drive for 2 years now with no issues, I and use them the exact same way). I would probably also get two one to use vista's complete system back up so that I will hopefully never have to spend 20 hours reinstalling all my games and software again.

Once again thanks you for all of your help and I hope to hear back from you. As a side note sorry for making these messages so long I figure the more information you know about what I have done will let you know if I messed up something some where.

[rev_olie]

Good response, plenty of information

I think you probably do have some form of hardware fault with your hard drive.

The last link I gave you for sea tools was because you couldn't boot to Vista. However now you are there we casn try a different one. Its essentially the same program however people ave reported better results using the Windows Version of th software.

Click HERE to download. Then install.
Next read These Instructions to learn how to use the program.

Make sure all unnecessary programs and services are ended to allow SeaTools to have full dependency from the hard drive.

Also at this point I need to remind you to backup your data if you haven't done so yet. If the first reinstall you did didnt help then its possible you could have a failure soon.

[Darken1]

thanks again for the fast response, I ran seatool the long test over night. It came back with a failed test this time saying that the hard drive had stopped communicating with the program, that I should check the power and data cables to the drive. So I'll try this other program you sent me, I'll try replacing the SATA cable and use a different power cable. If replacing the cables doesn't work though I'll just order another hard drive go from there.

Thanks for the help, I'll post back if any of the above works or if something else goes wrong.