Irresponsive Computer - What to do now?

[Sigurd]

Yesterday the laptop was working fine. Speed was as normal as it gets, no issues whatsoever. Today it as fast and responsive as a snail that's been prodded. Even typing creates a delay, even opening Notepad does!

There's not even any programs, or files which I could have downloaded. Nothing, nada, zilch. I tried freeing some space, ran Scandisk, ran Defragmentation, deleted all my cache and temp folder, closed a few useless processes, ran an up-to-date virus check - all to absolutely no effect.

It can't even have been the need to reboot the whole thing - last night, for the first time in what must be months, I actually turned it off before going to bed. Now, the only hint seems to be that it is on the verge of over-heating ... but with it having been switched off, it just reacts slowly.

Yesterday, switching it off the "orthodox and safe" way, it was absolutely fine --- today it's like watching a tortoise move. Anyone have any other clues as to what I could try, as I'm out of obvious options? *shrugs*

[Loddfafner]

I had similar symptoms just before my hard drive died. Make sure that everything is backed up before it is too late.

[Beorn]

I was having quite slow and unresponsive delays with my PC till I downloaded a hacked version of Uniblue: Scan driver (http://rapidshare.com/files/229195449/UNIBLUE_DRIVER_SCANER_2009_v2.0.0.49_FULL___KEYGEN .rar), which has now updated all the necessary drivers and whatnot.

Everything seems alright for the moment. Give that a try.

[Skandi]

Two things, check how much of the system resources are being used when it's just sitting around. if it's saying less than 5 percent and you still have the problem, turn it off let it cool down totally and then try again. if you see a slowing down as it heats up then you can suspect a fan problem. (check the system temperature in bios) If it is heating up too much, STOP USING IT ON THE BED! Or you may have a dust problem in there. Otherwise take psys advice.

[Sigurd]

Hmm, thanks for the advice nonetheless, I will keep it ready for an instance where a similar problem occurs but the approach that worked here doesn't --- but looks like the problem has been found. The hint of velvet on Skadi for a useful program monitoring system processes turned out to be the first I saw and tried, and it works, thanks to good old Filemon. :thumb001:

It looks like for some reason there was some unexplained and still unexplained issue with the keyboard drivers (explaining why typing slowed the damn thing like ten times), which saw to the keyboard working but anything therefrom being difficult. Unexplained because the hardware manager had not displayed any error there either: Obviously it was installed, and working, but unable to find the error, which could perhaps be a driver-attacking virus yet-unbeknown to AntiVir, which could have infested itself at any time, but only to strike now, I do now vaguely seem to remember once accidentally clicking an unknown RAR file, and panicking until AntiVir told me naught was wrong...

FileMon, on the other hand, spotted the error, which neither AntiVir nor Hardware Manager, nor ScanDisk (which should check system files including faulty drivers, I thought...) were able to determine for some reason. It took a bit of looking over it, but it was the main process where the results looked rather "offish". It also spotted an error with my Opera (explaining why it's been closing itself for days like every few hours), but that could not have been the problem, as Firefox was equally irresponsive, and Notepad didn't need either anyhow.

This in turn led to the computer trying to rectify this problem itself, for some reason duplicating a RAM-consuming system process, of which I had deemed both instances as absolutely necessary as I was unable to close either ("This process cannot be terminated" or sth along the lines). So, too much RAM already being consumed led to most of the thing near-overheating, its attempted self-remedy slowing it further. With only WinME at my disposal, it didn't exactly tell me how many resources it ate. :P

I should have thought of the possibility, as from there it was an "easy issue". Drivers off, drivers back on, system process that tried to remedy the old issue no longer duplicates, and the whole thing --- at least for the time being --. works at the speed of a falcon. :)

A bit ashamed now, really, but thinking of something as trivial as the keyboard drivers wasn't exactly the first thing that came into my mind... :D