My PC is running slower than usual

Hey everyone,

For the last few months, my PC has been performing significantly worse than usual. At first, I assumed it was just a software issue, but even after a clean reinstall of the OS—completely wiping the entire drive—the problem persists. It’s becoming increasingly likely that we're looking at a hardware failure. I’ve done everything within my power to troubleshoot this; I opened the case, cleaned out all the dust, applied fresh thermal paste, and so on.
To be more specific regarding the slowdown, the performance drop is most noticeable during gaming. League of Legends used to run smoothly at 100 fps, but now I'm lucky if I can even hit 20. I also recently installed Chivalry, and while I had no trouble running it a year ago, I'm currently struggling to get anything above 10-15 fps.

Running Windows 7 32
Nvidia Geforce 9600 gt 512
Intel Pentium Dual-core E2200 2.2 GHz 2 Gb-a
2 GB RAM

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. 🎉

You should probably check on the health of your hard drive first.

Just grab CrystalDiskInfo and get it installed—then, if you want, feel free to paste a screenshot here so we can all take a look at what's going on.

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Larry Ortiz5 said:You should probably check on the health of your hard drive first.

Just grab CrystalDiskInfo and get it installed—then, if you want, feel free to paste a screenshot here so we can all take a look at what's going on.

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Ugh... Since it's flagging a "caution" warning, there's definitely an issue. Here is the screenshot:

http://prntscr.com/7ivbkq

Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing—that the hard drive might be the culprit. Did you happen to notice if Windows is taking forever to load up or just struggling to reach the desktop? Or is this issue strictly limited to when you're running games? Also, have you tried updating your graphics card drivers lately? It might be worth installing the latest ones or checking if there's a specific patch for the game itself.

Larry Ortiz5 said:Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing—that the hard drive might be the culprit. Did you happen to notice if Windows is taking forever to load up or just struggling to reach the desktop? Or is this issue strictly limited to when you're running games? Also, have you tried updating your graphics card drivers lately? It might be worth installing the latest ones or checking if there's a specific patch for the game itself.

Everything is fully updated; that was one of the very first things I handled immediately after reinstalling Windows. The boot time doesn't seem any slower than it used to be, usually hovering around the 30-second mark. If I had to pinpoint where the performance drop is most noticeable, it’s definitely during the initial loading phase of my games.

You might want to give an HDD regenerator a shot; it could potentially help since it looks like the drive is starting to shuffle bad sectors around, marking them as occupied just to try and maintain some semblance of data integrity..

It’s probably worth running a check with HDD Sentinel too, because if my memory serves me right, there's an option in there that flags the drive once it's officially reached its expiration date and is ready for retirement..

Honestly, your best bet is to back everything up immediately and then start shopping around for a new hard drive.

Since you mentioned you already opened it up, cleaned everything out, and swapped the thermal paste—honestly, I’m running out of ideas here—it really feels like we might be looking at a hard drive issue. By the way, have you maybe switched to a higher resolution monitor lately? Or were you playing those games on a smaller screen with a lower resolution before this started happening?

But he didn't even bother to include the temperatures, as far as I can tell... you should probably install CPUID HWMonitor and Core Temp just to be safe, though it’s likely just a slow hard drive or maybe the processor is overheating.

You need to fix that drive. You've already got built-in tools right in Windows (just right-click the drive icon and hit properties), plus there are independent programs like the regenerator or HDD Sentinel mentioned earlier... But first things first: back up your important data. That said, a bad drive probably isn't what's slowing your PC down.

So you said you took it apart. Start checking your CPU temperatures—monitor them constantly to see how hot it actually gets. Grab a tool like CPU-Z and watch the clock speeds while you're putting the system under load. You could run something like SuperPI, then check CPU-Z to see if the multiplier and speed are behaving, or if the frequency hits 2.2 GHz or just stalls out. It’s entirely possible you didn't seat the CPU, paste, or heatsink correctly, and once the processor overheats, thermal throttling kicks in and drags your performance down.

And finally (or maybe we should have started with this), I don't know why nobody suggested running a deep scan for viruses, malware, and other junk. It's totally possible some piece of malware is running in the background sucking up your CPU cycles and resources. Use something legit, though; people have their favorites, but personally, I stick with HitmanPro.

One last thing: your computer might be sluggish because an overactive antivirus is constantly scanning and running checks in the background. If you're using something heavy on resources, try disabling it for a minute and see if your gaming performance improves...

darkowl72 said:You need to fix that drive. You've already got built-in tools right in Windows (just right-click the drive icon and hit properties), plus there are independent programs like the regenerator or HDD Sentinel mentioned earlier... But first things first: back up your important data. That said, a bad drive probably isn't what's slowing your PC down.

So you said you took it apart. Start checking your CPU temperatures—monitor them constantly to see how hot it actually gets. Grab a tool like CPU-Z and watch the clock speeds while you're putting the system under load. You could run something like SuperPI, then check CPU-Z to see if the multiplier and speed are behaving, or if the frequency hits 2.2 GHz or just stalls out. It’s entirely possible you didn't seat the CPU, paste, or heatsink correctly, and once the processor overheats, thermal throttling kicks in and drags your performance down.

And finally (or maybe we should have started with this), I don't know why nobody suggested running a deep scan for viruses, malware, and other junk. It's totally possible some piece of malware is running in the background sucking up your CPU cycles and resources. Use something legit, though; people have their favorites, but personally, I stick with HitmanPro.

One last thing: your computer might be sluggish because an overactive antivirus is constantly scanning and running checks in the background. If you're using something heavy on resources, try disabling it for a minute and see if your gaming performance improves...

It’s mostly because he mentioned he already wiped everything and did a clean install 😁

Man, I think I need to get my eyes checked... 😍

What kind of GPU temperatures are you seeing while you're gaming?

Larry Ortiz5 said:Since you mentioned you already opened it up, cleaned everything out, and swapped the thermal paste—honestly, I’m running out of ideas here—it really feels like we might be looking at a hard drive issue. By the way, have you maybe switched to a higher resolution monitor lately? Or were you playing those games on a smaller screen with a lower resolution before this started happening?

The resolution remains exactly what it was before: 1280x1024. I have even gone as far as dropping the resolution to lower settings in my games, hoping against hope that it might provide a boost to the FPS, but to no avail. It simply hasn't helped at all.
Since quite a few people have been asking about my temperatures, I figured I should probably post them here. At idle, with nothing running in the background, my GPU sits at 45°C and the CPU stays around 40°C. Once I actually start doing things—specifically having Chrome open alongside a session of League of Legends—both the GPU and CPU climb up to 50°C.
I think I’ll give HDD Sentinel and a pass with the HDD Regenerator a shot next.

HDD Sentinel tells me that there isn't any immediate action required; apparently, my performance is sitting at a perfect 100%, even though the health has dipped down to 92%.
I tried running HDD Regenerator as well, but it was a total wash—it scanned the entire drive only to conclude that it couldn't find a single bad sector.

Is there any realistic possibility that the issue isn't actually the drive itself? Could we be looking at a fault with the GPU, the processor, or something else entirely? I'm even wondering if the motherboard might be the culprit.

I’m going to try swapping out the hard drive, as I happen to have a spare one lying around.

Hello everyone,
A few days ago, I ended up replacing my motherboard because a lightning strike fried my old one. After I installed the new board, I didn't get any video on my monitor at all. I managed to fix that part, so I have a picture now, but the PC is running incredibly slow. I can't even get a single game to install properly, which is frustrating since everything worked perfectly fine with my previous motherboard. I guess if anyone could offer some help, I'd appreciate it.
My components are: Processor: i5 2500
GPU: Sapphire r9 280
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3
RAM: 8GB (4x2GB)

What exactly was fixed, and how did you go about it?

Did you do a fresh Windows reinstall after swapping out the motherboard?

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. He was the one who handled it, and when I checked back, he showed me that the PC was running just fine. Everything seems to be in order, and it's installing all the necessary drivers without any issues.

Just because it boots doesn't mean it actually works... those aren't the same thing. Wipe the drive, reinstall Windows, get all your drivers sorted, then give it another shot.

William Richardson12 said:Just because it boots doesn't mean it actually works... those aren't the same thing. Wipe the drive, reinstall Windows, get all your drivers sorted, then give it another shot.

I have already tried that approach, and I don't think that's the issue here. The system won't even shut down properly when I click the shutdown command. Just a week ago, I was playing GTA V and it was running perfectly at 60fps. Now, I can't even manage to install Call of Duty 2.

Just wipe Windows, install every single driver, then hit me up. Thanks.