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

[Tina N Fields]

Thank you, Peter,

I am downloading that now.

T

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

On 11/11/2017 6:13 PM, Peter Brawley wrote:
> On 11/11/2017 15:41, Tina N Fields wrote:
>> Is Spin-rite still a good tool to use to diagnose potential hard 
>> drive failure, for a Win 7 laptop?
>
> CrystalDiskInfo is free and IMO better
>
> PB
>
>>
>> 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
>>
>
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