R61 Freezes, Feels Sluggish

[Nycto]

I have a Lenovo R61 Type 8933-WJJ.

About a month ago, it started acting sluggish, and now it's freezing up.
At first I thought it might be just that I was getting too comfortable with the speed of my new tower build, but I realized after fiddling around with my A31p, that it was handling certain tasks faster than the R61.

I know it's not a virus issue, I did a fresh install of Windows 7 onto the hard drive that I stuck in there, coincidentally around the same time it started acting up. I run Avast for an anti virus, and I use Spyware Blaster and Spybot Search & Destroy, as well as a modification to the HOSTS file...fairly confident it's not that sort of an issue.

My first guess was the hard drive, since I got it in a trade and the individual I traded with is rough on his computers...but it's passed every test I've thrown at it with Seatools.

I've also done a cycle of memtest86, and that came up clean.

I notice the sluggishness of the laptop most when it tries to install or open a program. I get that same sluggish feeling sometimes with firefox. In fact, the last two system freezes came about while surfing the web. Oddly enough, sometimes its fine and whizzes right along. Hmm...it also takes a good amount of time to fully boot into Windows. I'll get an error about the antivirus being uninstalled, simply because Avast hasn't started up at that point.

My gut is still set on something being wrong with the hard drive...but I figure I would ask here for second opinions.

Thoughts?

[RealBlackStuff]

What is the size of that HD, and how much free space is left on it?
You need at least 15% free.
Clean out the Firefox and IE caches, as well as your Temp folders.
Have you got the likes of iTunes on it? That's a very hungry software.
Also, what is the temperature of your CPU?
The fan might be clogged, and new thermal paste (like AS5) sometimes does wonders there as well.

[Nycto]

Hard Drive is a 320 Samsung Drive, with around 150 GB free. Don't use any i-toys...not an Apple guy.

I can go ahead and grab system temps in a few...I am in the process of testing out components. The system does run pretty cool though, and I usually have it out on a flat surface.

Swapped out memory, and it totally locked up within five minutes of being in Windows.

When I say sluggish, by the way, I mean, we're going so slow that there are times I can type out a sentence, and I can watch the letters appear on screen several seconds after I've pushed the keys on the keyboard.

I've been contemplating a cpu swap anyway, so this would be a good time to eliminate that as a potential problem

[ZaZ]

Hmm...it also takes a good amount of time to fully boot into Windows.

That sounds like the hard drive, though I can't tell you why it passed the Seatools test. If you've got another drive to swap in, that might be an option for testing purposes.

[ajkula66]

That also sounds like a buggy piece of software, with those letters appearing with delay...

If you have a bootable PC Doctor for DOS CD (or can burn one) run all the HD diagnostics from there.

Good luck.

[RealBlackStuff]

Stop your AVAST for 10 or 30 minutes, then try again.
On some machines Avast is known to slow things down quite a bit, particularly during virus-def updates.

[Nycto]

Swapped out hard drive with a fresh copy of Windows, and the system has quite a bit more zip now.

CPU temp is bouncing around between 38-40 degrees Celsius.

I'll put the 320 GB drive back in and try what's been recommended above on it.

EDIT

HDD Sentinel showed Hard Disk health to be ~25%. Swapped drives, swapped out CPU, dusted fan, and we're good to go.

[jflores]

Hi, I had my own R61 acting that way during several months (around 6) and wanted to share my experience.

After serving me well for almost 4 years but the R61 becoming inexplicably and painfully slow, I tried almost everything : RAM upgrade, CPU upgrade, HDD upgrade then SSD, with a fresh Windows install every time.
At each upgrade, things seemed to become normal again (system zippy again), but becoming slow after a couple of months.
One day, I understood the problem at the same time i saw it : the screen became black with red vertical stripes all over it.
It was my graphics chip going bonkers, once and forever.
I learned it was not an uncommon problem on these models.
Hopefully it is not, however, what plagues your Thinkpad.
Take care,
Joscelyn