SOLVED [Windows 7] VERY slow, programs continuously freezing & slow start up

Hello OF-Comunnity,

Brand new to the forums and I am having one of the worst problems of my life.
My desktop is only 5 months old, and there is a very critical problem that it's going through, and it just began happening a few days ago.
My computer's applications are constantly freezing, it takes a while for things to open, when i reboot it stays at post-logo black screen for about 2 minutes, then the logo comes and goes, then back to black screen, mouse cursor/wait-cursor for about another minute or 2. Then the logon screen comes, and then it takes about 30 seconds for the login.
Even opening pictures takes a while, and it is starting to really put a huge damper on my daily-life.

My computer is an hp p6210y
AMD Anthlon xII Quad Core
8 GB RAM
Diamon HD Radeon 5770 Video Card
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

For Exact and more in-deph specifications:
http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/hp-pavilion-p6210y/4507-3118_7-33777301.html?tag=mncolBtm;rnav

I ran a scan on my computer using Malwarebytes which has litterally never failed me a day in my life whenever I have had the rare encounters of a trojan. And my initial virus protection software has not detected anything either, so I highly believe their is something wrong with my computer itself.

I would love to solve this problem without haveing to restore it to factory conditions.

Any assistance at all would be HIGHLY appreciated, thank you in advance.

You don't mention your hdd in your post I wonder if there is something going on there.

Have you tried a fresh install of windows to see if maybe something went haywire with windows?
There is others here way more knowledgeable than me about things hopefully someone can help you and you get it figured out.
Also welcome to the forums

It's most likely a faulty driver from something you just installed. Use the RESTORE function to go back a few days earlier....problem solved?...if not, go back a month or two. If still not solved....


It could be a memory problem. Open the computer and remove all the sticks but one. Problem solved? If not, swap sticks and/or swap memory banks. Still a problem.....

It could be a hard drive problem. Run CHKDSK/r on your computer from a COMMAND window over night, it will check the integrity of the hard drive and make sure you don't have any hardware errors. If errors are found, it will correct them. You will have to reboot to activate the drive checking. Problem not solved.....

Get a back up hard disk and use DriveXML to make an image of your system so you can restore it if necessary later.


Do a factory restore and see if that clears things up. If so, its most likely a driver installation that is causing the problem. According to MicroSoft, crashes and slowness are 80% faulty drivers. You can then slowly reinstall your apps and see which one causes the problem.

It's possibly your HDD on its way out.

Did you OC it at all? If so, set all settings to stock and see if the problem goes away.

I don't see how a faulty driver could cause POST delays; a faulty drive however will. I would not suggest running chkdsk /r as chkdsk is a file system utility and will only mark off bad sectors at the file system level, meaning if you erase the drive, the bad sectors will likely cause problems on the new file system. Power on your computer with the hard drive disconnected and see whether the POST times improve. If they do, you should download and burn the bootable diagnostic utility made by your drives manufacturer (Seatools, Western Digital Data Lifeguard, etc.) and run a short DST. If it fails the DST, then you can either RMA the hard drive or run the long DST and hope it corrects any issues.

If your POST times do not improve with the hard drive removed, you should check your RAM. You could play musical DIMM's as mentioned above and see whether the symptoms go away with a stick(s) removed, or you download and run the Memtest86+ for at least 16 hours.

Post back with updates after accomplishing all of this.

Now that I had over night to think about this
my girlfriends computer was doing similar things as this last summer and finally wouldn't boot at all
Found out in the end she had bad memory

Hello everyone.
MY PROBLEM IS SOLVED.
Just as the majority vote concluded, the problem was my HDD.
It was going out, slow 8 minute start up, freezing programs, then it got to random rebooting.
Then I spoke to one of my friends from college, (my main tech guy).
He also said it was my HDD. He listed the symptoms and the last one was the HDD making weird sounds. I didn't have it... one hour passed -hssssssssSSS-tc-
, and i scrambled to back up all of my important data ASAP.
Got it in time, bought a new hard drive, installed 7, and im currently re-installing all of my info.
Thank's EVERYONE for your surprisingly quick responses and knowledge on this matter.
I really appreciate the support and help from each of you.
My strong point's design. Hardware im good with but lacking in the area of the physics of a computer. Again, thank you all. Problem solved.