recurring performance problem

[notw.va]

hi there, i'm having some issues with my laptop that i would love some help with.

It's a HP probook4520s with the i3 M350 2.27ghz, 2gb ram and i'm currently running 32-bit windows 7 ultimate on it.

It worked perfectly fine the first 9 months, i purchased it in may,2010. but then it started slowing down, i mean it started over-night, it's a bit wierd but i'll try and explain it well;
When i start the laptop, the OS has trouble booting up, sometimes it persistently has trouble booting up other times it starts up straight ahead. when it has had trouble, i've tried running startup repair but that's of no help. Once i've gotten windows running, it takes extraordinarily long for it finish doing whatever startup procedures it has, even though i tried disabling everything but the bare minimum in msconfig. during this loading time in windows, the aero interface keeps switching from basic to aero, to and fro a couple of times. When the system starts, it automatically connects to my home wifi network, but then sometime during the whole loading up process, it comes up with limited connectivity. and when i troubleshoot it, they tell me the wlan service is not running, which they give me an option to start, after which the network works fine and then goes off again...this happens 3 times, and then the system "stabilizes"...meaning it runs smoothly for quite a while until one of the following;
- if i tap "ctrl-alt-del", the system freezes up for 5 to 10 mins and then tells me the security options couldn't be displayed.
- sometimes, my safari browser freezes indefinitely, and i cant close the process cause of the above problem
- if i try to shutdown/restart/sleep/lock/hibernate the system, it freezes.

It wasn't so severe the first 2 times, but each time i formatted my system and started from scratch and it's fine the first 2 weeks even with all the software installed and then it all goes haywire...i've had to format 3 times now in total...

Does anyone have any clue why this is happening? i know my ram is quite small, and i plan on upgrading it, but the system worked fine 9 months in a row...

[jdeb]

The first thing that comes to my mind is malware. Have you run malwarebytes?
If not download it, install it, and run it in safe mode. The best way to use it in my experience is to install it on another machine, pull your hard drive, and attach it to an adapter and scan the drive while no device drivers are loaded but you will have to buy the adapter. But you can try safe mode first to see if it comes up with anything.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.50.1 Download - TechSpot
IDE/SATA to USB 2.0 Cable Adapter - Turn Your 2.5", 3.5" or 5.25" IDE or SATA Drive Into A USB Drive! 2020

You may also want to run hardware diagnostics

running CCleaner wouldn't hurt either
Download CCleaner 3.04.1389 - FileHippo.com

[notw.va]

thanx for the quick reply. i ran CCleaner which found 2,336 mb of temporary files, it cleared it. i then ran the registry scanner and fixed all the issues. I also ran malwarebytes in safemode and it was unable to find anything. I restarted my laptop after this and it's still in the same condition.
p.s. it froze during restart and i had to hard shut down and then start it.

[jdeb]

have you run the hardware diagnostics that came loaded on the laptop? It may be overheating CPU or GPU or if the hardware diagnostics check out o.k. back up your files and do a clean install from recovery discs or from the recovery partition, it may be a software issue. Do you have space left on the hard drive?

[notw.va]

it came with a linux distro and no hardware diagnostics software, i checked on the downloads section on hp too. i have 40gb free on the OS partition. there are no recovery discs. but like i said in the post, i have already ran a clean format and reinstall from scratch 3 times in the past 2 months...

[renowilliams]

I would definatley do hardware diagnostics.

If your laptop was out of warentee,I would recommend getting a copy of windows 7 and blowing out the oem install all together. Typically they just don't run as well as a clean install of windows and have not the greatest software bundled. Something to consider when warentee has ran out. By the way, 2gig of memory with 32 bit version of windows 7 should be fine. I loaded windows 7 32bit on an 8 year old laptop with 1 gig of memory and it ran just fine.

[glc]

HP has bios-based diagnostics. If they don't work, you can download memtest86+ to test the memory and you can download hard drive diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer.

You can also download and build the Ultimate Boot CD, it has all kinds of diagnostics and utilities, including the 2 I mentioned.

[notw.va]

ok...so, I downloaded the memtest 86 USB installer and ran the exe to make my pen drive bootable. I restarted the system (again through a hard shutdown) and the USB took over and started the test. It was running quite smoothly and quick. But mosur seems to be stuck.
It shows ;
Pass 35%
Test 41%
Test #6 [Moving inversions, 32 bit pattern]
Testing : 184K - 1912M 1904M
Pattern : fffeffff

It shows zero errors..there is a blinking dos cursor under L2 cache, but I think that was there from the beginning. I'm not posting a screenshot cause I'm posting this from my iPad, but if u guys think the rest of the info on the screen may help, I'll put up a screenshot...

[notw.va]

Heyy there...an update;
The memtest86 froze, so I did a hard restarted and went into the bios and there were diagnostics available in the bios. The ram checked out fine, but while checking the hard disk it gave the following error "Short DST: Failed". I think DST stands for Drive Smart Technology. Anyways, it gave me my warranty I'd and so forth and told me to contact the customer service center. Thankfully, I have around a month and a half left on my warranty, so will take it to the service center in a day or two. I guess they'll replace the hddor something, so now I've gotta back up everything....
Thanx for all the help.