Grimy
31-12-2011, 08:54 AM
Hi guys,
My sister has a HP Touch Smart 300-1060a - AMD Athalon II X3 400e 2.20GHz - 4GB RAM - Seagate 500GB HD – ST3500418AS.
WINDOWS 7 Home Premium 64 bit
For the past year it has had the problem where sometimes it starts and runs normally (starts up in less than a minute, opens programs quick as), but then will sometimes take 3 minutes to open a blank Word document, and 15~20 minutes to start up.
Once up and running it is usually okay doing email, browsing, solitaire, but as soon as it needs to think a bit more deeply it starts to struggle.
When it goes on a go slow the HD starts ticking away (usually slowly, a few clicks at a time) as though the platter arm is flicking back and forth.
I removed a program the other day (MS Office). It took about ½ an hour but finally said it had uninstalled. I restarted the PC and it wouldn’t start. After several attempts a message came up (can’t remember the exact wording) saying it couldn’t find the Windows OS and I should try to restart by turning the power off and back on. After trying that several times with no joy it popped up the black safe mode screen with the option “Your PC could not restart-would I like it to run Start-Up Repair Utility”. Clicked yes and after about 20 minutes of a screen saying Start-Up Repair Utility is searching for problems and will attempt to repair them, it restarted (W7 is soooo much more helpful than XP!!).
I have run Sea Tools and the HD passes all the tests. I have also installed Ashampoo HD Control and it reports the HD has 100% health. I have run the disk surface test and the benchmark tests - it reports no problems and average read/write numbers for the HD brand/model.
I ran MemTest for 14 hours and that reported no problems.
Running MSE, Malware Bytes and Spybot. No problems reported.
When transferring files (via usb cable - photos to an external drive) the transfer rate sometimes dropped to less than 2MBs a seconds (3hrs + for a couple of GBs). Other times it will whizz through quickly.
My feeling is still a faulty HD because of the ticking, but as the HD tests are fine, I’m wondering if something else could be the problem? Is there any burn-in test software I could run to identify the component that’s causing the problem? Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks, Graham.
My sister has a HP Touch Smart 300-1060a - AMD Athalon II X3 400e 2.20GHz - 4GB RAM - Seagate 500GB HD – ST3500418AS.
WINDOWS 7 Home Premium 64 bit
For the past year it has had the problem where sometimes it starts and runs normally (starts up in less than a minute, opens programs quick as), but then will sometimes take 3 minutes to open a blank Word document, and 15~20 minutes to start up.
Once up and running it is usually okay doing email, browsing, solitaire, but as soon as it needs to think a bit more deeply it starts to struggle.
When it goes on a go slow the HD starts ticking away (usually slowly, a few clicks at a time) as though the platter arm is flicking back and forth.
I removed a program the other day (MS Office). It took about ½ an hour but finally said it had uninstalled. I restarted the PC and it wouldn’t start. After several attempts a message came up (can’t remember the exact wording) saying it couldn’t find the Windows OS and I should try to restart by turning the power off and back on. After trying that several times with no joy it popped up the black safe mode screen with the option “Your PC could not restart-would I like it to run Start-Up Repair Utility”. Clicked yes and after about 20 minutes of a screen saying Start-Up Repair Utility is searching for problems and will attempt to repair them, it restarted (W7 is soooo much more helpful than XP!!).
I have run Sea Tools and the HD passes all the tests. I have also installed Ashampoo HD Control and it reports the HD has 100% health. I have run the disk surface test and the benchmark tests - it reports no problems and average read/write numbers for the HD brand/model.
I ran MemTest for 14 hours and that reported no problems.
Running MSE, Malware Bytes and Spybot. No problems reported.
When transferring files (via usb cable - photos to an external drive) the transfer rate sometimes dropped to less than 2MBs a seconds (3hrs + for a couple of GBs). Other times it will whizz through quickly.
My feeling is still a faulty HD because of the ticking, but as the HD tests are fine, I’m wondering if something else could be the problem? Is there any burn-in test software I could run to identify the component that’s causing the problem? Any suggestions welcome.
Thanks, Graham.