My 6 yr old Dell is sick. Im trying to determine if it's the hard drive failing or a virus.

Symptoms: Everything happening super slow lag. For instance if I type an email the words show up 20 seconds later.

The mouse pointer takes off and does shit by itself

When the machine boots up there is a weird 2-3 second clunking sound coming from the CPU.

Strange and unrelated message boxes

?


PS- im posting this from my laptop

Try ccleaner or glary utilities, and see if that speeds things up.

6 years old is pretty old. The longest I've had a PC was a 10 year old high end Sony notebook.

May be time for a restore. Back up your important files to a thumb drive and restore your operating system. This should be done every couple of years anyway because Microsoft gets bogged down with crapware and viruses/malware, etc. that brings your computer to a crawl tieing up resources.

The clicking inside could indicate the hard drive is nearing its end. If you don't already have a backup, do it now.

Specs?

Run > dxdiag

^ to see your specs


If it's not even a dual core, just trash it.

If it's really bad, you'll start getting message that your computer couldn't find a bootable drive. You are then days or weeks away from death.

Try Malwarebytes.com

Sounds like a hard drive problem. Back up anything you don't want lost forever and buy a new hard drive. Install it and see if that makes a difference. They are pretty cheap these days.

Newegg sells hard drives pretty cheap.

chkdsk and defragment also. use Glary to clean up your drive and repair the registry.

take it to a microsoft distributor shop like egghead, bestbuy, or microcenter

they'll hire college maybe's to fix it for $75/hr and DELETE YOUR PERSONAL FILES - EVERYTHING YOU'D BEEN WORKING ON

there problem fixed. you can't get ahead because your PC never works well enough to get far, and when it gets down the road: it's deleted. there goes your reports, family photos, and settings - and if you have any - work

(ha! delete the HD is was/is their common repair practice, microsoft shops. never no mind "car-ly flour-ina" sold pc's and printers promising women the ability to keep family photos on pc and print them (IN CRAPPY QUALITY - they omitted - and always broken and having to ask neighbor for PC help - they omitted. printer was made in china they forgot to say the ones made in usa were tampered with (drivers) so they didn't work...))

microsoft 1985-2005 has to hold the record for most damaging and costly technology sold in the history of mankind. what else locked up so much cause so many frustrated customers and damage to it's own country's industry? nothing.

Almost certainly a failing hard drive. Back up your stuff now while you can still access the drive. Dell has a diagnostics tool that you can get to from the boot menu (F12). It will test the computer along with the hard drive. Heed its warning if the hard drive shows as bad.

george bush gave Dell broth. a push: plush gov sales contracts from GPO (gov procurement office) for feds and etc. not only sell Dell but contract gave dell rights to ALL REPAIRS AND MAINTENANCE. oh really nice "contract"

Dell can run unix, apple wares (it can even if they say it can't or no one has), and is a pretty nice company that tries to stay "clean of controversy". they had little to do with microsoft and offered customers a choice against.

i don't fix microsoft based anything unless paid - because i'd be helping a company that ripped me off and avoided court and owes me money AND i know they'd use this to attack what i use: plenty of evidence they used my money and the internet to do that. no thanks.

sp. was it GSA? OPM? i think they've been "expanding" gov purchasing i better get a calculator to estimate how many pseudonyms they are using now

Dell is a shit computer that uses the cheapest quality components available

Your hard Drive is Dieing, also you need to reinstall the mouse, lack of ram will make a mouse jump around. You couldn't give me a dell.

Tom K Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You couldn't give me a dell.

Where to buy?
What to buy?
How much to spend?
For web surfing, lots of email, and the occasional movie.

sfsfsfsef Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> May be time for a restore. Back up your important
> files to a thumb drive and restore your operating
> system. This should be done every couple of years
> anyway because Microsoft gets bogged down with
> crapware and viruses/malware, etc. that brings
> your computer to a crawl tieing up resources.

Well, I put all my important shit on an external drive and did systyem restore. Working MUCH better now but not perfect. The weird boot up noise is gone too.

Computers mystify me.

OK then Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Tom K Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > You couldn't give me a dell.
>
> Where to buy?
> What to buy?
> How much to spend?
> For web surfing, lots of email, and the occasional
> movie.


Mac

Are you still running Microsoft XP on it? I had to junk my beloved Dell this spring, as it was a 2006 machine with Windows XP and could not be upgraded to run any of the newer Microsoft operating systems as there just was not enough space and memory and power in this. The technology had changed so much also that the new browsers would never work right on many applications. I ditched the whole system and bought one made to order. It is awesome,but with Microsoft, the only constant is that in a year or so, I will have to get rid of Windwn 7 because again, Microsoft will stop supporting it.
Unless you want to rebuild your whole system, the best thing may be to junk it and trade up. You will wonder why you didn't do it sooner once you use a better system with power onough to run everything properly.

You can still run other browsers with XP. Virus scanners still work with XP, just that MSSE and others aren't being updated.

I think you have 5 years of support left on Windows 7. You have 3 years of service packs plus 5 years beyond of support for version 8, giving you 8 years.

You can a refurbished business class Dell. I prefer not to own 2 computers where the support runs out simultaneously.

The description makes me believe you are hacked. Likely win32.exe rocking the world since 2008.

Were you in a hotel lately? Hotel wifi will get you dirty in minutes. Those guys in Shanghai know what they are doing.

Hacked Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The description makes me believe you are hacked.
> Likely win32.exe rocking the world since 2008.
>
> Were you in a hotel lately? Hotel wifi will get
> you dirty in minutes. Those guys in Shanghai know
> what they are doing.

Are you trolling? because clearly you don't know shit about computers.

Moronistic Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hacked Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The description makes me believe you are hacked.
>
> > Likely win32.exe rocking the world since 2008.
> >
> > Were you in a hotel lately? Hotel wifi will
> get
> > you dirty in minutes. Those guys in Shanghai
> know
> > what they are doing.
>
> Are you trolling? because clearly you don't know
> shit about computers.

Yes he is trolling. Although I'm surprised there's not been alot more trolling in this thread.

OP is does sound like your hard drive is dying. Six years is a long time for anything to last these days. I just had a 5 year old hard drive die on me back in June. Lost alot, but mostly porn and not much important. Try ccleaner and malware bytes like others have said, but I think you may need a new hard drive.