Problems with programs going temporarily unresponsive or "hanging"

I have an HP Pavilion dv4t laptop that I purchased new in 2009. It's worked flawlessly for the three years I've had it. Running Windows 7, which I clean installed the first time I used it.

Recently, as in the past month or so, it's developed a problem with programs suddenly going unresponsive for a few seconds up to a minute. I noticed it first in Firefox, thinking maybe it was the browser, and tried all the tricks from their support forums to little avail. But it's not just Firefox- if I'm doing nothing but playing music on itunes, otherwise not touching my computer, I've had that stop and stutter as it goes unresponsive, then comes back. My scanner program did it yesterday. I've even noticed my sticky notes widget going unresponsive!
It always comes back after a minute or so, but it's frustrating that it's doing this at all.

The only new thing I've downloaded is Paint Tool Sai english pack (an art program, and from the trusted developer's website.) I'm not using my computer any differently than I have in the past.

Any idea what might be causing this or how I can fix it? Would a RAM upgrade help? I'm running 4gb now, my computer can support up to 8.

I can supply any additional specs or info if needed.

 

Have you tried going into safe mode to see if the issue persists? Also how much free space do you have on your hard drive?

 

I had that problem once. I solved it by reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Win 7 64. I could never figure out what was causing that unresponsiveness. But everything works now so maybe some problem with the hard drive maybe? The reformat and reinstall of Win 7 seem to fix it.

 

I haven't tried safe mode yet, no. I'm currently using less than a third of my hard drive, have 372gb available out of 465.

Thanks for the reformatting idea. I hope that's not what it comes down to, but I'll keep that in mind!

 

Actually you might want to run diagnostics on your hard drive while you're at it. Most HDD manufacturers have a diagnostic utility on their website, you'll need to find what brand you have though.

 

Yep, reformatting and installing your programs is never a fun thing to do so I would do tijo's recommendation first.

 

could you post your system spec up for us cpu/gpu/hard drive/operating system.

you could run a sector scan on your hard drive as mentioned above by tijo. you could try HD Tune found in my signature below. this found 2 bad sectors on my 320gb western digital black which caused quite a lot of problems like you are having.

 

MrDJ, did HD Tune mark those sectors not usable? Did that fix your problems with that drive?

 

nope, i couldnt hardly use it after that. it was only 2 sectors but i was getting black screen on boot up then it just hanged and had to hard turn off. then when it finally did boot up and i tried to open firefox or software the windows little blue circle would continue until i done another hard turn off.
then i tried safe mode and it crashed booting into that.
replaced it with another 320gb western digital and everything was fine. and then a few months later i get my beast. now its 12 seconds to boot and be on the forum

 

Intel Core2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Toshiba MK5055GSX 500gb
Windows 7 x64

I downloaded HD Tune, and it's telling me there's 9 damaged sectors that have been replaced, and 1 unstable sector (looking under the "health" tab.) Is there anything I can do about that?

I ran the error scan twice as well, the first time it came up with six error blocks, and the second time only two.

 

Time for a new drive. With 9 bad now only more will come in the future......................

 

Try finding a program called "Spinrite". Download the iso, and boot off of the CD. It finds and either fixes, or marks bad sectors bad. Do a level 5. And make sure you don't want to use your computer for at least 12 hours wile it runs. I have revived bad hdds this way.

 

Windows' built-in disk error checking (chkdsk) may be able to fix the problems. Left click on the drive --> properties --> tools --> error checking. Tick the 2 boxes then click the start button. You'll get a message that chkdsk will run when the computer is restarted. Reboot, let chkdsk do its thing then try the drive again.

 

Here are a few tips

1. Download and install tune up utilities 2012
2. Go to run>Msconfig> Disable needless startup programs and sevices
3. Defragment you hard drive.

I am sure you ll the difference in the performance..

 

I found your number 2 to be very difficult for newbies to do. They just don't know what to disable.

 

Everything except microsoft services and Antivirus programs.

 

And gaming mouse drivers, headset drivers and any other peripheral for which you don't want to have to load the drivers just to use them like you normally do to name a few others you may want to keep as startup entries.

The best advice when it comes to startup items is to look for what each entry does and decide for yourself. While some are pretty much no brainers like Adobe Reader, Zune, (the dreaded) iTunes, Quicktime & Co, if you disable some non windows or AV related stuff like the ATK driver on Asus notebooks to give a precise example, a newbie will be flipping talbes because his Fn hotkeys aren't working anymore. This is why that kind of tweak needs to be researched for any entry unknown to the user.

 

Thanks so much for the suggestions! Defragging and cleaning out all the temp/unnecessary folders was the first thing I did when this started happening. I will definitely give the chkdisk a go, and mess around with some of those startup programs. And yeah, I wouldn't disable anything I didn't know the function of first!