[dba-Tech] hard drive failure - maybe - diagnostic

[Gustav Brock]

Hi Tina

If you regularly can defrag the drive, there is probably nothing wrong with the harddisk.

Make a backup of the user data and reinstall Windows to get rid of all the old stuff - you could even upgrade to Windows 10 to get a speedier machine. And replace the harddisk with an SSD If you wish to spend some good money.

In no normal user scenario Windows Firewall should be left switched off.

/gustav
________________________________________
Fra: dba-Tech <dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com> på vegne af Tina N Fields <tinanfields at torchlake.com>
Sendt: 11. november 2017 22:41:36
Til: Off Topic; dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com
Emne: [dba-Tech] hard drive failure - maybe - diagnostic

Is Spin-rite still a good tool to use to diagnose potential hard drive
failure, for a Win 7 laptop?

My son-in-law has a Win 7 Dell Vostro 3500, vintage 2010. It has
recently become extremely slow, taking upwards of 10 minutes to boot,
and over 5 minutes to launch programs. Malware-bytes finds no threats.
It's been routinely defragged. Until sometime in the recent past, it was
using a VPN to remote into the home office out in Beverly,
Massachusetts. The company switched to putting everything in the cloud
sometime in the last couple years (I think).

I had installed Vipre on it from my subscription, but the IT guys in the
home office wanted everyone to have the same anti-virus tool, so they
uninstalled Vipre and installed their AVG. They also controlled all the
Windows updates.

I looked at this computer yesterday, and found no anti-virus protection
on it, the Windows update feature disabled, and Windows Defender
firewall off. I think this box has been left unprotected since the
company put everything in the cloud. My son-in-law believed that the IT
guys were still taking care of his protection and updates. Since they
are no longer connected via VPN, I'm thinking that just isn't true.

So, I looked through the processes running and the start-up items. There
were three identical Intel entries in the start-up; I unchecked two of
them, which did speed up the boot process a bit. It had been over 15
minutes before.

As slow as it is to launch a browser, once the browser is up, accessing
web pages is right up to speed.

We did download and run Malware-Bytes, which found no threats.

I discovered he didn't have a recent backup of his data, so, he spent
yesterday evening and some of today doing that.

I'm noodling away on this and wondering if the problem is a failing hard
drive.

So, any other thoughts? And is there any other diagnostic software I
should bring to bear on this problem?

Thanks

--
Tina Norris Fields
231-322-2787
tinanfields-at-torchlake-dot-com