I am usually very capable when it come to fixing or maintaining my computers but now I am stuck. The problem is with my HP laptop.

There is a light on the front that lets you know when the hard drive is "working" and this light will flicker like it should during normal usage and processes. The problem is the computer will just slow to a crawl every few minuets (and lasts for several minuets) and when this happens I notice the light will stay on solid. To me this means it is working more than normal. I have gone through and stopped every start up program that is not needed. I have removed all programs that I don't use. Still have the problem. I watch the task manager and the CPU usage will go from about 5% - 10% up to 90% - 100% and then drop back down. It does not stay at this level for more than a few seconds though. I check the processes that are running and most all of them stay at 00 under the CPU column.

To me it seems there must be a program running in the background that I can not find. If this is true, how do I find it? If not true, where else do I need to look to fix this issue? I have done the registry clean, the defragmenting, the virus scan (with my new bitdefender program), cleared all cookies, etc.... I am at a loss.

 

whatsrunning.net
Maybe this program will help, it's sort of an enhanced version of task manager.

 

I would get an image of the drive as it sounds like it may be failing.. Look in the event viewer to see if you can tell what is happening..

I think the drive is showings signs for time to replace...

 

I also get a lot of script error messages. I checked the Mozilla site and everything they say to check is OK. I am using the latest version of Fire Fox.

 

Just did this on my desk top and it seems pretty cool. I will go try to do it to the snail.....I mean laptop

Hope this is not the case. Although the laptop is about 5 years old I think. Are they hard to replace??

 

Does sound like the HDD is on the way out. The OS is having issues reading some of the sectors on the drive and will keep doing retries to read and write to those sectors.

With some HP units you can go into F10 and run the HDD diagnostic tests. Should be a tab for Diagnostics. At the HP splash screen during bootup hit the F10 button.

MikeyB

 

When the CPU usage goes to 90-100%, which process(es) are showing the highest usage?

I've also seen the indexing service throw a high load on the machine, but it is usually a consistent load vs. something that only happens for a few seconds at a time.

 

Process explorer is another good one for seeing everything that is running and their CPU usage.

 

when my desk top computer started doing the same thing it was only about a month and windows went down for the count the hard drive was ok but i had to have it wiped clean and start over the tech said i also had a virus that was running a bunch of programs in the background.

 

Same exact thing happened to my desktop too. It just started crawling and seemed barely functional until one day i got the blue screen of death. hard drive got wiped and windows reloaded and shes all better now. I'd recommend backing stuff up right now before you lose it all.

 

Thanks for the responses so far. Looks like I better start to back up my stuff while I can.

I will try the F 10 and see what I find. As far as what processes are showing usage when the CPU spikes, I don't see anything changing. That is what was really confusing me. It will slow to a crawl but all the processes look the same. Some flicker to 8 or 10 and back down to 0 but nothing spikes up. Only the CPU usage.

Is changing the HD and processor something I can do? I know about the static and other things to be careful of when I added memory to an old computer but just never changed out something like this.

 

In task manager click on the top of the CPU usage column and it will resort to show the high users at top.

How much disk space do you have left?

 

System Idle Process
firefox.exe
taskmgr.exe
seccenter.exe

I have 18.4 GB of space left.

 

System Idle process does not actually cause CPU usage. It is in effect the available usage. Run task manager all the time and when ever you see the computer slow down toggle to it to see what is working so hard. It is often anti-virus software doing scans or updates.

With 18.4 Gb of open space you should still have plenty of space but if it is badly fragmented it could slow things down. Clean the recycle bin then do a clean boot into safe mode to stop from loading all the auto load crap then run defrag. Restart when that is done.

 

I did the F10 and went to the HD diagnostics. I ran the check and it said it would take 85 minuets. After clicking "Enter" it only ran for about 30 seconds and stopped. The message that appeared was #1- 07 FAILED I did this 4 times and each time did the same thing and same results.

Recycle bin is empty. I have run the defragmentor a few times but not in safe mode. I can try that.