windows lagging badly (disk I/O problem? not sure)

[virmantas]

I'm using windows vista on my HP pavilion dv7 and am having terrible headaches in the past few days.

The entire windows keeps lagging badly, mostly when I turn on a browser, it stops for a while ~20 seconds maybe and I get that wait sign on my mouse pointer, at that moment I can't navigate anywhere else and windows toggling doesn't work anymore, links don't work, or say if I click on start button, even if it comes up I can't see anything on the right hand side (where Documents, Pictures, My Music folders are). After those ~20 seconds it comes back from not responding but not for long, then the same thing happens. Sometimes it starts lagging even worse and Skype (you obviously what it is) shuts down by itself stating that there is disk I/O problem, maybe that's the problem, I don't know, never heard of it. I've been googling and it's advised to check the hard drive if it's properly connected, but I don't want to ruin my guarantee. I've tried restarting my laptop a couple of times and I can see that I'm getting nowhere doing that. I would try system restore, but last point has been created a few hours ago so it won't help because I'm having this problem for more than 24 hours now. Please help me

[Geek-9pm]

HP pavilion dv7 is a hi-end laptop and should not be slow at anything.

Can you verify that the problem is only when on the internet?

Disconnect from the internet, reboot and try some cool graphics intense game. That should reveal any software or hardware problem right away.

And try playing a DVD movie. And open a spreadsheet at the same time. Should not be a problem.

If the problem is only on the internet, we can tackle that.
BTW, how are you doing on virus scans? What AV do you have?

[virmantas]

Well, i've tried playing bioshock 2 on my computer and it seems to go as good as other similar games used to.
Here's what else I've experienced over the last day:

-Every time i reboot my computer, in dos it suggests to do a disk check, first time it went through it with no problems but it didn't solve the problem, today i've managed to it once more and it froze at step 4 out 5.
-Every time i reboot my computer, in a few minutes i get a notification that rundll has stopped working.
-Computer became extremely hard to use, it's freezing from time to time.
-I never use Windows Internet Explorer, but I've fround out that at the moment it's the one that is easiest to use, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are messing up everything big time and when it starts freezing really bad skype quits itself with an error "Disk I/O error" (I've said that before). I've tried to reinstall Google Chrome, but it doesn't help at all.


I'm not that experienced with computers, but I think it has to do something with Bad Sectors in the hard disk, well that is something you guys should know. I've had this problem on my very first computer about 7 years ago, and if it is the same problem, then I expect my computer to die completely soon and I really don't want that to happen. Please help me

[Broni]

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287 (or http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic28744.html)
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

[virmantas]

Is there any other way to do it? My DVD rom is broken and it doesn't read cd/dvd and theres no floppy device on my computer.

[Broni]

You can get new DVD drive for under 30 bucks.
If that's not the option, the only other way, I can think of, would be to slave the drive in another computer and run the test there.

[virmantas]

I might try and format my HDD, the question would be - would that solve the problem?

[Broni]

How are you going to do it, since your CD drive doesn't work?

[virmantas]

I will try and boot from USB, my friend has done it, so it shouldn't be a problem.

[Broni]

That depends on your BIOS supporting booting from USB device.
Check that first.

[Geek-9pm]

You're in good hands with Broni.
Allow me a brief comment here. The way this is going it's pointing to your hard drive is having a problem. Meet repaired to make a backup of your important data and shell out for a new hard drive.

Now here's procedure I have outlined before this forum to try to recover a faulty hard drive. If at all possible tried to rearrange the partitions on your hard drive. What I would do is create a small partition at the beginning of the drive and give it may be the 500 MB. It could be a Linux partition, which will make it invisible to Windows. Then when you install Windows over again you will install it in a new partition after the Linux partition of about 500 MB. The idea here is to avoid putting the system in the same part of the hard drive word was before. In a few cases the first part of the hard drive becomes, for some reason not quite clear, damaged after a while.

The best solution would be to try another drive, but I offer this as an alternative to try to save a little bit money.

PS. I did overlook the fact that you cannot use the optical drive. Sorry about that. But you can just make a small primary partition, and in Windows will install on the next available partition, which I think will be D:  or E:  and the system will function quite well at another partition. In fact, I am running on partition E:  right now using Windows XP.

[virmantas]

So I am back here again. The problem is still not solved, not I am sure that it IS hard disk failure, bad sectors maybe, been transfering useful information to external hdd and through ~170gb I got like 6-9 errors stating that the file cannot be read because of disk I/O error. There is something wrong with my hdd. Please tell me is it possible to fix this problem at home? I mean I still have warranty on this computer and might leave it to HP to fix it, but I can't do it because I need my laptop here all the time.

Would formatting the HDD fix this problem?
Is it really essential to run that Disk Diagnosis you've offered? If it is, then is there any way to get an image file of that software, not the .exe file which would create CD or Floppy because I can't use neither.

Thank you very much

[Geek-9pm]

...
Would formatting the HDD fix this problem?
Is it really essential to run that Disk Diagnosis you've offered? If it is, then is there any way to get an image file of that software, not the .exe file which would create CD or Floppy because I can't use neither.
...

NO. If CHKDSK can not resolve the problem it may indicate failing drive. Best advice now is to backup what you can of you personal stuff to either DVD or external storage.

You said the system is under warranty. Call them and report your troubles. Do not offer to try and repair it yourself. You should not have to reformat the drive in a new system. This is a quality control problem.They need to fix it.

[Allan]

Disregard this post please. There are more than enough cooks here. Sorry.

[Broni]

You said the system is under warranty. Call them and report your troubles. Do not offer to try and repair it yourself. You should not have to reformat the drive in a new system. This is a quality control problem.They need to fix it.

Ditto.