Member Avatar for Buppy

Hi,

I'm running Windows 7 32 bit version and I've started to encounter this problem recently. After some time of using the computer (random mostly), several applications like Chrome and Windows bases applications (cmd, task manager, windows explorer, etc) starts to run really slow. For example, if I open a new tab and type in a web address, It takes 10 sec to even start processing it and 10 more to open ths site (any site). If I want to open the task manager, It gets stuck in black window for like 10 sec before it opens. For some other things the wait time is even higher. For some other applications, like Firefox, everything still runs normally.

Tried scanning for viruses and HDD bad blocks, nothing found. HDD is only ~20% full, and the LED isn't even flashing when an application is stuck (meaning there is no HDD read/write process going on meanwhile).

Rebooting the PC always helps for some time.

What could be causing this issue? Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by RH-Calvin

Dani AI

Generated

Short summary and where to look first: the pattern you describe (many apps suddenly hang for seconds, CPU/RAM look normal, HDD LED quiet, reboot temporarily fixes) is more often an I/O or kernel-level stall than a pure CPU problem. It can be caused by a storage controller/driver timeout, a failing SATA cable or drive, a kernel driver (DPC/interrupt) stalling threads, or a background service that intermittently blocks user processes. This builds on ’s svchost idea and answers ’s temperature check — since temps are OK, focus on I/O, drivers and logs.

Quick reproducible checklist (do these when a slow episode is happening):

  • Open Resource Monitor (resmon.exe) and watch the Disk and Memory tabs. Look for long queue lengths, high Avg. Response Time, or rising “Hard Faults/sec.”
  • Check Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc) -> Windows Logs -> System and Application for errors/warnings at the time of the slowdown (disk/driver timeouts, storahci/iaStor messages, or repeated service errors).
  • Run basic integrity and disk checks:
    sfc /scannow
chkdsk /r C:
wmic diskdrive get model,serialnumber,status

    (backup before running fixes; chkdsk /r may require a reboot.)

Hardware and driver checks:

  • Swap the SATA data cable and try a different SATA port and power connector. A flaky cable/port commonly causes intermittent stalls even if the LED is quiet.
  • Check SMART with a small diagnostic utility and run Memtest86 for RAM faults.
  • Update chipset and storage controller drivers (and BIOS) from the motherboard vendor if Event Viewer shows storage driver errors.

Isolation steps before drastic changes:

  • Boot into Safe Mode or perform a clean boot to see if the issue disappears (that separates Windows/kernel problems from third-party software). If it vanishes in Safe Mode, narrow down startup/services (careful to back up before disabling things; ’s startup tip helps, but start with logs and Resource Monitor first).

If none of the above finds it, capture a short trace (Resource Monitor + Event Viewer entries, or a Process Monitor/Windows Performance Recorder trace) and post the relevant error lines and the process names shown waiting during the freezes — that data usually points straight to driver vs. app causes.

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Member Avatar for spudirelad

Try this, look at the svc host, and go deeper to it you may fid a process with the host causing the slowdown, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx. hope this helps. if you find a process using a lot of cpu suspend that process or find the dll or exe. create a backup and remove the offending item.

Edited by spudirelad because: speling
Member Avatar for Rik_

Is it a PC or a laptop? Does it seem like it is running too hot?

Member Avatar for Buppy

It's a PC and the temperatures seems to be normal. I checked the task manager and processes, and CPU usage was no more than 10% and RAM usage was about 50% - basically everything seemed normal. It just started to be slow suddenly. Could it be worn out Windows installation or some hardware failure?

Member Avatar for RH-Calvin

GOTO: RUN, TYPE: MSCONFIG, A window will appear. In startup section uncheck all the unused program which you don't use regularly. Click save & restart.

Ref: TheSysadminblog.com

Edited by RH-Calvin
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