[Xyph]

Just a quick question here.

So I am still using an old Dell laptop, 2 GHz Intel CPU, 2 GB RAM, not top of the range by any means, in fact its about 5 years old now, but despite a few reformats and various minor issues it generally still works fine and does everything I need it to.

Anyway, recently, I noticed it started to just lock up in a way I'd really never seen before. Like I'd be doing something and suddenly everything would get really sluggish before the cursor would just stop functioning (I mean it would still move around the screen, but clicking anywhere had no effect) and over the next few minutes windows I had open would flicker in and out of a white-out (Not responding)-titlebar and looking vaguely normal except still not doing anything.

During these extremely frustrating periods the HDD light would be pretty much solid, and usually, eventually, everything would suddenly catch up and I could use my laptop pretty much normally again. Although, prior to posting this I did finally give up waiting after about 10 minutes and just turned it off and on again (y'know hard reset, with the button).

My first assumption was that, finally, my computer was just breaking and I'd need to get a new one and while this may still be true, I seem to have fixed the problem (fingers crossed) by just turning off Automatic Windows Update.



So my question is, what exactly was going on here?

To the best of my knowledge, I've had Auto-update active for most of the time I've had this computer, and I've never experienced such a problem before. It's perhaps worth noting also that when I managed to get the task manager open during these periods of nonresponsiveness CPU usage was still almost nil, although wuauclt.exe had the highest memory usage (and again, HDD light almost solidly on).

 

[spunk.funk]

The issue is with Microsoft Updates, not Windows Updates visit http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate
click Change Settings on the left Scroll down and DISABLE MICROSOFT UPDATE.
You might want to scan for malware with malwarebytes as well.

 

[Xyph]

OK no it's actually not fixed. I thought it might be because I noticed sometimes when this would happen there'd be a little yellow automatic update warning thing in the system tray, although I could never actually bring up the update dialog because nothing was responsive enough.

I disabled Microsoft Update in the manner you described although I'm not sure why this would make a difference, is this a common issue?

The problem is worst at startup, it literally takes over 10 mintues from typing in my password to actually being able to use my desktop properly. God forbid I try to open a program before whatever is going on in the background has finally finished.

Once it's actually got started it's OK for the majority of the time, but I have noticed a slightly less persistent version of this happening when using Excel, just as it began to save an autorecover file.

It also happens randomly with browsers, seemingly. Usually when they're already open they suddenly just become unresponsive and lock up for a while, but I can also try to open Chrome and sit there for literally 5 minutes waiting with nothing happening except sluggishness and hard disk usage... when I open the task manager chrome.exe is there, CPU usage 0%, memory usage just gradually increasing. Pretty much the same story with firefox. I think this may be related to problems shortly after startup but I had an extremely frustrating period earlier today where I was opening Chrome, waiting 5/10minutes, ending it in task manager, trying again, then maybe trying Firefox, repeat, all the while with no visible signs that the program was actually opening beyond a ridiculous slowdown and their presence in task manager.

So it seems to be an issue related to hard disk usage but that's about as far as I've got. I also downloaded and installed Malwarebytes as you suggested, ran a scan but only found 2 fairly insignificant looking temporary internet files which have since been deleted.

Again I've never had a problem like this on this computer before, things have gone wrong yes but never such a frustrating, intermittent slowdown as this. Any ideas?

 

[spunk.funk]

Go to Start/Run and type chkdsk C: /R and press enter. The Command Prompt window appears (DOS). Now type a Y and reboot the computer. the Check Disk utility will run at next boot up and try and fix any file errors. Also download the ISO image for Drive Fitness Test in my signature and burn the image to a CD using IMGBurn also in my signature. And boot off of the newly created CD and run the Quick and Advanced tests on the HDD.