So my parent's have an old Dell P4 Desktop running Windows XP.

The probably with this POS is that the harddrive clicks/chugs/grinds/crunches away almost nonstop. Its ridiculous. Its loud and continuous enough that if i watch a movie in their office where it is, i have to turn the PC off. Its making the computer super slow. Sometimes something as simple as opening the Start menu will trigger a new round of chugging. during the chugging things slow down a lot. This is a 2.8ghz P4 w/ 2 gigs of ram running XP. It shouldn't be THIS slow.

It has a Seagate drive and i ran the diagnostic utility on it. I ran every test and it passed them all.

I also (and have in the previous month or so) defragged it using the built in defrag and Smart Defrag.

I've run all sorts of anti malware and spyware on it and they use Norton Internet Security. Its bloated as shit, but should still in theory work.

So what else would make this thing a) access the HD all the time and b) slow down so bad during HD access.

5/19/2009 5:13:10 PM

dban that pos and reinstall the OS. if its still wacky, put it in the drill press.

5/19/2009 5:32:38 PM

Quote :

"Norton Internet Security"

SRSLY...

I can't remember correctly, but if it's the version of Norton I'm thinking of, then go in there and turn off the "online backup" feature and any other feature that you don't use.

They only offer you like 2GB or so of backup space, and after you fill it up, it will still try access your files and back them up, even though you are out of space. Your hard drive will chug for atleast 3 days straight trying to do an online backup.

Had to deal with this on some clients personal computer, what a headache. Malwarebytes still found like 40 virus/spyware/malware after I did a full scan with his version of Norton.

5/20/2009 10:34:53 AM

get rid of all anti virus software and see what happens

i can't tell you how bloated a lot of the home anti virus products are--it makes a huge difference to get rid of them and switch to something less ESET that isn't a bloated whore

[Edited on May 20, 2009 at 10:56 AM. Reason : V ...probably that too]

5/20/2009 10:51:41 AM

your HDD is dying. The diagnostics are wrong since SMART is mostly useless. Get a new HDD and either do a new install of windows on it or image it from the old drive.

5/20/2009 10:55:44 AM

Ok, i'll check out thsi Norton crap. I would uninstall it, but they just paid for the shit and i feel bad tossing it out. Maybe i'll just disable most of it. ha

edit: just looked. i don't see anything about online backup. i dont think it does that.


^Thats pretty much what i was wondering. How accurate are these tests? Are they worth a shit? etc. I'll find a new HD for it.

[Edited on May 20, 2009 at 1:11 PM. Reason : dsd]

5/20/2009 1:06:28 PM