When a Damaged PC Misbehaves But Doesn t Always Fail

When a Damaged PC Misbehaves But Doesn’t Always Fail

PC performance usually begins to slip slowly over a period of time. This can make it seem insidious to you later because it creeps up on you until one day you shake your head and ask, “What’s wrong with this system?”

If instead, you see your PC performance take a sharp dip quickly (for example, from one session to the next there is a sharp decline in responsiveness), the first thing to consider is whether some type of failure, misconfiguration, or change in your system may be responsible for this behavior.

The first place you should look, as always, is at any modifications (additions, removals, or tweaks) that you’ve made since your system last performed well. Because of this, it’s important that you address situations like this as soon as you spot the symptoms; the passage of time may dull your memory (unless, of course, you’re using the PC journal recommended early in this book and you’re making entries faithfully).

Next, try the techniques described in the section “Performance-Related Maintenance” in this chapter to see if you begin to see an improvement in your system because of these actions. If not, you may have a basic instability in your operating system (see Chapter 9, “Stabilizing Your Operating System”) or a hardware failure (see the section “Using Device Manager” in Chapter 6, “Transforming Yourself into a Smart Troubleshooter” or Chapter 11, “Overcoming Hardware Failures”).

With an unstable Windows environment, you’re likely to see error messages in conjunction with the performance loss. This isn’t always true, but it’s often the case. With a hardware failure, it’s possible that your PC has become underpowered because your memory failed, overheating is affecting performance, or a hardware conflict exists (two devices using the same resource).

In extreme cases, you can start fresh by reformatting your system and reinstalling Windows (see Chapter 16, “Starting Fresh the Smart Way”).