[lawgick]

During the last week or so my computer has slown down considerably. Simple tasks make my cpu spike up to 80% and browsing the net and play video's keeps it at a solid 100%. I saw the TSG SySinfo msg well making this thread but wasn't sure if it was an advert trying to trick me. Sorry for the paranoia but you know how it is on the net these days. =)

Specs:
AMD Phenom 2 x4 810 processor 2.61 GHz
4GB ram
windows 7 32bit
ATI RADEON HD 2600XT

[gurutech]

Bring up Task Manager, and click on the Processes tab. It will tell you which application is causing the CPU spike. Depending on the app, you can just "kill" the app and the system should return to normal, but it is still possible the app will respawn, in which case there may be an underlying issue (such as malware/virus, or a hard drive going bad).

[lawgick]

Thanks for replying guru.

Task manager list chrome as the culprit but even when I shutdown chrome the computer is still spiking when I do basic tasks, or play a game, or watch a movie. It's was not like this a week ago. Everything was fine. In fact I could browse the net with multiple tabs open and open a game and play at the same time with no slowdown. I've run spybot, and malewarbytes and come up with nothing.

My system drive is a 500GB Western Digital. It's split into 2 partitions. One is the system the other is storage. I also have 3 more hard drives in addition to that one.

Let me know if you need anymore details.

[gurutech]

what spikes when you shut down chrome? I would try clearing cache/cookies in chrome, and also run a defrag and disk check (scandisk). Check both boxes on scandisk and allow it to run when you restart. It will take a while, but let it run. It should mark any bad sectors so the system doesn't try to use them again.

[lawgick]

Ok I managed to do the disk checks, but when I was done windows would not start. Said the OS was missing. So I put in my wondows 7 repair disc and let it check for boot errors and correct them. Toke a while but I finally was able to load windows.

I don't have the high cpu usage now but there seems to be a bit of a lag when I try to open files on the main drive. This doesn't happen with the other drives just the main one and it's other partition.

[DoubleHelix]

That definitely sounds like a failing hard drive. Run your regular full backup, then get the diagnostic program for the drive and run that. If it fails any of the tests, you'll need to replace it.

[lawgick]

I used HD TUNE PRO to test the hard drive but all the test came back clean. idk

Is HDT TUNE a good program for testing drives?

[DoubleHelix]

Use the diagnostic program provided by the drive manufacturer. If chkdsk found errors, there's a problem with the drive.

[lawgick]

I've used the diagnostic tools from western digital. The drive pass the test...

what the hell is going on here?

[lawgick]

um, anyone?

[lawgick]

welp

[DoubleHelix]

Run chkdsk again.
Look at Event Viewer for errors.