new-ish laptop sluggish and getting worse

Hi All (I apologize if this is the wrong forum for this post)- I am a novice so bear with me-

I have a thinkpad x1 with win 7 that I got around christmas time. Over the past few weeks I have noticed the computer becoming more and more sluggish. I cannot trace it back to one particular particular program installation or update. Overtime, it seems to use more and more ram to perform the same simple tasks- chrome (2 windows, 5-10 tabs per window) + video streaming (playing a fully buffered video via divx web player)- this used to run smoothly without issue- but it now takes 3.74gb/4gb ram (I assume this isn't normal?)

The problem sounds a bit like the OP's from this thread

When I try to restart it takes much longer than usual (though wake from sleep is still nearly instantaneous) and I get a flickering black screen with a white cursor on it while waiting(I generally rarely restart).

My anti virus does not detect anything (symantec- required by my work network) and neither does Malware bytes (installed and ran after the problem started). I also ran disk cleanup (no difference) and the disk defragmenter runs once a week. I had previous concerns about my hard drive (weird noise when engaged) but the noises stopped after a train trip (misaligned?)

I have avoided re-installing windows (no optical drive- have not gotten around to making discs yet) Is that the next logical step, or is there anything else I should try first? Should I be concerned about hard drive failure?

tia!

 

What type of hard drive is in it?

 

Good idea to run Malwarebytes and Symantec in Safe mode (F8 after power on). Once you identify the HD go the the manuf. site and download a tool to check it. what percentage of free space do you have on the hard drive?
If you rule out a bad hard drive, please post a screen shot of task manager - Processes Tab- with show processes from all users checked
before you open many applications (preferably after a restart)

 

7mm seagate momentus 320gb 7200rpm

c: 195 gb free/ 274 gb

q: 13.3 gb free/ 21.1 gb (recovery partition)

I ran the pc doctor application that came with the computer and it says that the hard drive is healthy

I will try running symantec and malwarebytes in safe mode- thanks

 

SeaTools | Seagate I would try the windows version.
Free space looks good

 

You don't need an optical drive for reinstall, a USB drive that's 4 GB or larger works as well.
All info and files you need are in my sig.

 

Have you looked to see what the CPU utilization is? Bring up task manager, enable "show process from all users" and click on the label in the CPU column to sort by cpu use. What's consuming the CPU?

Gary

 

cpu: Intel Core i5-2520M
total cpu usage hovers b/w 12% and 35%

system - ~3%
smc.exe- ~2.5%
SYynTPEnh.exe ~ hovers 1%- 2%
perfmon.exe ~1.8%

also noticed random processes popping up, then terminating themselves: lucallbackproxy.exe (4%) , bash.exe - after googling it seems these are symantec related?

 

That doesn't add up to 35%. What else is there?

Gary

 

did you ever run the seagate tool? I'd trust the manfacturers tool more than pc doctor..

Or running malwarebytes/symantec in safe mode. maybe defragging/clean uo while you're in safe mode also?

Great suggestions by JOSEA..

 

Did you click the "Show Processes from All Users" button?

Either way, that still seems really high CPU usage

 

k- i think i was looking at the wrong section in the task manager. Aside from what I listed- i noticed there were a bunch of instances of chrome.exe at the time (2 windows, ~10 tabs per window). Is there an easy way to copy and paste the entire list?

After restarting (computer screen went black randomly)- things look a bit different (also only have 1 window of chrome open w/ 3 tabs)

-ram usage 1.87gb/ 4gb
-cpu usage - hovering b/w 5- 12%

since my previous post, I
-ran malware bytes in safe mode- nothing found
-tried to run symantec and safe mode but kept getting an error
-restarted (still got the black screen with white arrow cursor while waiting for windows to load after inputting password)
-was prompted by the computer to run chckdisk thing- all normal
-ran seatools "SMART" test- PASSED, "long generic" test- still running

 

See the post here Print / Save "process list" from Task Manager by PSRumbagh
You need to create a .VBS and run it, it will create ProcessList.txt then you can attach that file to your post

 

I am not one of those Norton bashers; I think Norton is a fine product and far improved over the pre-2009 versions, but there's a little saying in my neck of the woods: "Norton is a good product until it goes bad"

Not "if it goes bad", but WHEN it goes bad. Norton always goes bad. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will eventually go bad. And since it gets its fingers into every part of the OS with its AV, firewall, tool bars and whatever other crap they're throwing in there these days, when one tiny part of it goes bad it tends to take the whole computer down with it.

 

One thing i forgot to note- symantec endpoint protection turns itself off from time to time now, as does "windows defender"

Thanks so much- i attached the process list as 2 jpgs

thanks for that input! I will attempt to reinstall symantec as well. if all else fails, I will reinstall windows from the recovery partition....sigh...just want to make sure it isn't something simple or malicious

 

Are you getting a message from windows security center to indicate this?
Since Symantec is an all in one solution I would disable defender to see if the sluggishness can be cured that way
AFA Malwarebytes, are you running the free version (on demand)? I do not see any obvious processes in the above screen shots.

 

geez, what do you have so many copies of Chrome open for....

 

chrome is multiprocess, all extension/tab get a chrome.exe.

Sound like page file swaping is the problem as there is not enough RAM for your normal use. Flash video is heavy on ram.

Probably clean up some unused program, and tweak some startup programs via msconfig or 3rd program.