Hater Depot wrote:

Somehow over the last week my P3-based laptop has developed a severe problem with hard drive seek times... but only for certain tasks. Opening a folder, opening a document, and starting any program has become excruciatingly slow. Startup, shutdown, and using programs once they've begun remain as speedy as ever
.....
And the first task to show the issue was opening the Downloads folder in My Documents. Then it spread to other folders, then to files, then to programs.

If it's hard drive problem, I don't think it'll be likely to selectively affect certain tasks. It sounds more like virus than hard drive problem. What did you download recently?

If there are harddisk errors they should show in the event log.

I tried to run chkdsk and it crapped out

What's that supposed to mean? chkdsk doesn't "crap out", ever. if it does crash or doesn't complete a scan, this definitely hints towards a hd problem, which may be hardware and/or software-related.

Get a boot-cd like UBCD, and use the (non-destructive) disk-checking tools to see whether the hardware is ok or not. If everything is in the green hardware-wise, create an image of your installation, do a fresh XP install and play around with it (installing software, doing file operations, etc.). If the hardware is OK i bet that a fresh install will make the system snappy again. If you're having a software/OS related problem, don't try to "repair" it unless you're prepared to spend a _lot_ of time identifying and solving the problem, with a very high probability of not being able to find and/or solve it at all. A fresh install is usually the most efficient way to get a system working normally.

I'm kind of wondering if it might be some overactive virus scanner or firewall, myself. Or it could be a fragmentation issue. Is your drive NTFS-formatted?

But yes, UBCD or some other OS-independent disc checker would be a good idea.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

What did you download recently?

This was my first thought too, but I rarely install new programs or download anything other than school stuff. Definitely nothing recently.

ADDiCT wrote:

chkdsk doesn't "crap out", ever. if it does crash or doesn't complete a scan, this definitely hints towards a hd problem, which may be hardware and/or software-related.

What I mean is that it crashed before completing the scan. But when I re-ran it today it completed and apparently found no problems. Not sure what to make of that.

I'm kind of wondering if it might be some overactive virus scanner or firewall, myself. Or it could be a fragmentation issue. Is your drive NTFS-formatted?

Yes, NTFS. My firewall is set not to scan programs as they run and that hasn't changed recently. No antivirus. Haven't checked fragmentation. Maybe tomorrow when I can afford the time, however....

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

If there are harddisk errors they should show in the event log.

Wow. There are hundreds and hundreds of event id 7 errors beginning five days ago. So apparently this is being caused by a bad block or bad disk.

But I'm still not sure that explains why browsing folders is slow inside Explorer but speedy inside Microsoft Office.

Hater Depot wrote:

But I'm still not sure that explains why browsing folders is slow inside Explorer but speedy inside Microsoft Office.

Simple: pretty much every version of MS Office uses its own special file browser instead of Explorer. (Office 97's file browser is bloody slow compared to Explorer on my XP machine.)

I wonder if some Folder Options thing might be at fault? Try opening an Explorer window and clicking on Tools->Folder Options->View->Reset all Folders.

No luck with that.

Well, it died today. In a couple weeks I will try to re-install Windows otherwise... RIP. 😢

I'm sorry. 🙁

I had a similar suspicous 'delay' problem, that regularily occurs after midnight - opening or rightclicking any non-EXE file or shortcut would cause Windows to delay 12 seconds until anything happens. This kills productivity, as you can tell... No, I haven't figured it out yet. It happens on any device and file system. Shexview + disabling shell extensions didn't do jack.

have you checked to make sure your hdd hasnt slipped into pio mode ?

The problem grew progressively worse until last night it bluescreened in the middle of a document. It took over an hour last night to backup my data due to the slowness. This morning it began bluescreening during every boot attempt.

I think the issue is a virus that got in on the 5th. At the beginning of December I was getting annoying log-in pop-ups from Windows Genuine Advantage Notification. I kept cancelling them because I didn't give a crap about WGA, but finally gave in because it was so annoying and really seemed genuine. Especially because the notifications and entire install process were in Japanese, the language of my Windows installation. But based on the event logs the evening of the 5th is when problems apparently began. I think that is about 7 hours after installing WGA. Later I used a tool to remove WGA, which found and removed apparently genuine WGA stuff, but obviously to no avail. Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe there is some nasty virus capable of very convincingly imitating WGA.

Hater Depot wrote:

The problem grew progressively worse until last night it bluescreened in the middle of a document. It took over an hour last night to backup my data due to the slowness. This morning it began bluescreening during every boot attempt.

That sounds a lot more like hardware failure, really.

As has been already suggested, try a live CD of some sort to check your hardware before you waste too much time trying to reinstall Windows.