Question computer lags... extremely so

[jedidia]

So, somewhen today my laptop got slower pretty much at once. By "got slower", I mean like waiting 5 minutes until your last mouseclick has any effect.

In the end, it hung up completely (not even the mouse cursor was moving anymore).

The problem is, this has not gone away after rebooting. The computer starts up as fast as always... But as soo as windows finished loading the basic system files, the lag starts to kick in again (usually after entering the account, but sometimes already a bit sooner).

The situation does not change when booting in safe mode.

I have now completed an excercise in patience, in which I clicked a few times with the mouse to open the windows explorer to check my disk space and open the task manager. This whole operation took me about 45 minutes, mostly waiting for windows opening up.

The result: 149 Gigs of disk space. Not the problem. CPU usage between 1 and 8 percent. Not the problem. The only thing strange in the processes is that consent.exe is running three times. No idea why, but doesn't use any CPU.

Did a memory check in BIOS. Memory checks out.

Posting this from my wife's laptop because waiting for the wlan to connect would probably take another 45 minutes, launching chrome another hour... But I can't even make it that far, by now the mouse cursor has locked up again (not the system in its entirety, though, as the task manager still reports minuscle changes in CPU usage.

There's no errors, no nothing. Just sudden excrutiating slowness, that none the less seems connected to windown (7, 64 bit, Home premium), as the computer boots completely normaly up until windows starts loading advanced system components.

Any hints at a solution are highly appreciated!

 

[Dantassii]

I'd suggest booting the computer off the CD drive off a rescue disk. Or even better, swapping out the hard drive for a blank one and just installing a fresh install of Windows on the blank disk. If the computer is still slow, then there's something wrong with the hardware and it's time to get a new computer. Save your old hard drive in any case as you can probably pull your data files and such off it through an external USB drive bay once you get your new computer up and running.

If the new hard drive boots up without a problem, then there's probably something (a virus perhaps) running on your old hard drive and you probably will have to do a wipe and reinstall to get rid of it.

Hope you backed up your data files also..

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder.

 

[Keatah]

Just restore from a recent backup..

 

[Artlav]

(a virus perhaps) running on your old hard drive and you probably will have to do a wipe and reinstall to get rid of it.

Huh?
No need to swat a fly with napalm, just check it with an antivirus off livecd/while plugged into another PC/looked at by an expert, etc.

 

[kamaz]

I've seen such behavior with dying HDD or HDD controller... boot from a LiveCD and run SMART tools to check drive status.

Other hardware errors are unlikely -- memory / bus errors will manifest as blue screens or apps crashing randomly.

 

[ISProgram]

I'm not an expert in computers, so I'm of little help here.

I've heard from somewhere, however, that consent.exe can block executable programs...and cause low PC performance and high CPU consumption.

The fact that you don't have a high CPU consumption seems to rule it out.

 

[jroly]

Yes could be bad hard drive, also try combofix if hard drive ok.

 

[dbeachy1]

Kamaz's suggestion is right-on, I have also seen this problem when a hard drive is failing -- what happens is the hard drive keeps retrying I/O paging operations, which is what blocks the process doing the paging. In other words, S L O W . . .

If you can get to the Windows Event Log you can look for disk errors in it. If the hard drive light stays on while the system is slow the first thing I would do is make a full backup of your data while you still can and then restore the data to a new hard drive.

 

[PeterRoss]

You could also schedule system disk check (will take just a couple of hours to open explorer, rightclick on C: -> Properties -> Tools -> Check now).

 

[jedidia]

Thanks for all the replies. There are a few issues compounding the problem, like the entire disk (including system and boot partitions) being encrypted, so any boot-from-CD program won't even see that the disk is there before it's decrypted... Which isn't going well so far (read: incredibly slowly, more slow than at other times).

I cannot use any system services, because they have a time-out. I.E. any diagnostic tools that windows provides won't start, not even the event viewer or the device manager. I can't even bring up the alt-ctr-del menu, that times out too. Task manager directly works by ctrl-shift-esc, but that's about it.

I have no compatible disk from another laptop to test, but I'd say hard drive problem is pretty high on the probability list. But unless I decrypt it, which according to truecrypt will take several days in the current situation, I can't even wipe it :facepalm:

 

[Dantassii]

I have to deal with 100% encrypted hard drives at work all the time. Sounds like your encryption/decryption process is having problems with a fragmented swap space or something like that.

I've never seen this sort of slowdown with any of our computers, but if I did, it would definitely be time for a new one as there's really no way to fix it short of rebuilding the entire hard drive from scratch.

Hope you have a backup of all your data as you may not be able to get it off that hard drive.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder.

 

[kamaz]

Thanks for all the replies. There are a few issues compounding the problem, like the entire disk (including system and boot partitions) being encrypted, so any boot-from-CD program won't even see that the disk is there before it's decrypted...

- Get a LiveCD with TrueCrypt (or put it in yourself) -- you can use e.g. truecrypt plugin for BartPE
- Boot from LiveCD
- Run TrueCrypt
- Select the partition/drive
- Tools -> Mount without Pre-Boot authentication

Besides, SMART tools will work anyway -- they operate at the hardware level, so they don't care what is on the drive.

ETA: If you cannot make the LiveCD/LiveUSB with TrueCrypt let me know -- I did one myself some time ago, so I should be able to either find the image or redo the process. (I had to reset a Windows password on a TrueCrypt'ed drive IIRC).

 

[jedidia]

I have managed to get chkdisk to schedule a disk check at startup during a good moment. The check went well until step 4, when it started looking at the sectors... It went up to 19% and then had to start repairing clusters. All concerning files in the windows system directories. I'd say I have my cause.

What baffles me is how suddenly the problem started yesterday evening. Just while browsing, from one moment to the other. No suspicous sounds, no errors, no nothing... Just like those sectors spontainiously self-combusted without apparent reason.

Oh well... I'll let scandisk work on until the evening. If it is still repairing sectors by then, I'll call it a write-off.

It's good that I never have much more than a few hundred megs of irreplacable data, and those I was able to recover.

 

[garyw]

Anything could have caused it but most probably a head crash whilst you were using it. The simple fact that it carried on working rather than crashing there and then is a testament to how robust computers are getting these days.

However, that hard drive is toast.

 

[Keatah]

Have you recovered all your data?

 

[Matias Saibene]

Thanks for all the replies. There are a few issues compounding the problem, like the entire disk (including system and boot partitions) being encrypted, so any boot-from-CD program won't even see that the disk is there before it's decrypted

Have you tried using a LiveCD of a Linux distribution?
Maybe there's some other LiveCD that can read the data.

 

[Linguofreak]

But unless I decrypt it, which according to truecrypt will take several days in the current situation, I can't even wipe it :facepalm:

Unless TrueCrypt makes use of some lockdown feature provided by the disk hardware itself, this shouldn't be the case. A Linux live CD with a partition editor should be able to nuke everything on the disk to the ground, or, at the very least, you should be able to wipe the partition table with something along the lines of "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1" (assuming legacy BIOS and the drive being a SATA disk plugged in to the first SATA port on the motherboard).

It's good that I never have much more than a few hundred megs of irreplacable data, and those I was able to recover.

If all your vital data has been recovered, the best and fastest option at this point is to nuke the disk to the ground and reinstall Windows. If you can't install Windows, then we've firmly narrowed the problem down to an issue with the disk hardware itself.

 

[dbeachy1]

I feel compelled to post this PSA (for everyone): always, always, always back up your irreplaceable data! If you can't do weekly incremental disk backups then copy your critical data to a USB flash drive regularly (or better yet, do both!) All hard drives die sooner or later, and sometimes they die instantly. I can tell you from experience that is no fun!

 

[Matias Saibene]

Unless TrueCrypt makes use of some lockdown feature provided by the disk hardware itself, this shouldn't be the case. A Linux live CD with a partition editor should be able to nuke everything on the disk to the ground, or, at the very least, you should be able to wipe the partition table with something along the lines of "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1" (assuming legacy BIOS and the drive being a SATA disk plugged in to the first SATA port on the motherboard).



If all your vital data has been recovered, the best and fastest option at this point is to nuke the disk to the ground and reinstall Windows. If you can't install Windows, then we've firmly narrowed the problem down to an issue with the disk hardware itself.

You can use a LiveCD (eg Ubuntu) to extract your data (via file explorer) and copy (or trying to copy) important data to another drive (USB, SD, another HDD, etc.).

Once I edited some partitions (quite easily) reading a bit on the Internet, and its corresponding manual. I used the GParted program.

Be careful with the following: I do not know if GParted (currently) supports NTFS. Yet I have understood that there are many LiveCD's that can repair Windows (based and not based on Linux).

http://download.cnet.com/1770-2018_4-0.html?query=live+cd&platform=Windows&searchtype=downloads

Good luck.

 

[jedidia]

Well, scandisk worked the entire day yesterday and didn't get above 20%. I don't think i'll want to use that disk anymore even if I managed to reinstall windows...
On the bright side, I finally hqve an excuse to shove an ssd in there...