What type of tools will I need to test out my windows 10 laptop, I 'm having issues where it wou...

[G+_Ben Reese]

Black Merc that was always my thought too, but it seems the size of the partition table may be an issue. Maybe it's fine for smaller drives still, but if SR is expecting a 32-bit value for partition start and size values, it may have issues if it finds a 64-bit value for these things. I really don't know what to expect and wouldn't want to be responsible for someone's drive getting messed up because the tool reads the address wrong.

 

https://superuser.com/questions/1107910/spinrite-6-mbr-followed-by-efi-error

[G+_Black Merc]

Ben Reese that does sound right... SG did say that the next version would be a full 64bit with its own OS(not relying on freedos). Who knows, maybe one could give the new SR its own partition so that one could do a routine 'scrub' on all hdd connected to the machine. SG did mention that with a 64bit OS of its own he could employ multi-threading to multitask on multiple drives at the same time.(and other improvements)

[G+_Damien Wessling]

Ben Reese Yep, I've experienced this particular message more often than not in recent times. It is frustrating, especially when you've come to rely on Spinrite as your primary 'go to' tool when you suspect drive quality issues. I haven't pushed Spinrite past this red flag yet, given the significance of the message... however, I might image one of my Win 10 machines onto a spare drive and just 'do it', bypass the warning and see if the image emerges on the other side intact and operational...

[G+_Black Merc]

I have not had the curse of win10... But I have had a system refuse to run SR.

[G+_Paul Hutchinson]

To find out which apps are hitting the disk drive the hardest:

1. Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)

2. If you see the minimal detail version click the "More details" link or press Alt+d

3. On the "Processes" tab, click the "Disk" heading label until you see the down arrow indicating a descending sort.

Now the programs accessing the disk the most will be at the top of the list.

[G+_Robert Ilbrink]

Donald, I would also check if the drive itself could be the source of your problems. If the drive has troubles reading certain sectors it's error recovery algorithm can take long to get an almost good read and to correct the minor errors. You could start with looking at the drive's SMART monitor. If you know someone who owns Spinrite, you could borrow that to see if the drive is indeed giving problems. If Spinrite was able to help you, it is only fair to buy a personal version afterwards from Steve Gibson's grc.com - Home of Gibson Research Corporation

[G+_Jason Marsh]

I'd add that, from Resource Monitor, you can see what the disk queue and response time look like. If a particular program is doing a lot of read/write or a particular file has some action with a long response time, that can help you to isolate the problem, as well. A program hogging up the disk could be isolated by uninstalling or disabling it, or a bunch of files with long response times could indicate problems with the disk itself. There's only so much the drive can do at once, and only so much bandwidth available for communication between the mobo and storage, so if one program is taking it all up or if files are hard to access, requiring a lot of error correction within the drive itself, operations are going to grind to a halt.

 

I've noticed a similar problem with a few Win7 machines that were painfully slow periodically. In this case it was CompatTelRunner (windows telemetry), and went away after some idle time. On both, there were high response times on dozens of entries, with nearly all of them coming from telemetry. Disabled it and problem doesn't come back. Of course I ran SR on the drives (WD Blue 500GB) and after four years in service both are in excellent health. Customer wants an upgrade anyways, so RAM and SSDs on the way.

[G+_Donald Kloss]

Jason Marsh I also noticed that same app I went through and disabled that, on windows 10 when it is bogging down it shows system as the culprits but not exactly what is going on

[G+_Donald Kloss]

I ran crystal disk info for the smart monitor and it shows caution, shows relocated sectors count is yellow

[G+_Jason Marsh]

Hmmm... You could have it nailed already. SpinRite can restore sectors previously taken out of service, but laptop drives, because they're in mobile devices, tend to take a beating anyways. You might run SR, or you might go ahead and replace the drive.

 

If you decide to replace the HDD, I'd suggest going with an SSD. Not only are they faster, noiseless, and did I mention faster, they are less susceptible to the bumps and jolts that laptops sometimes get, as when the dog runs by and snags the power cord, the crumb snatchers want to play with the 'puter, or you inadvertently drop it on the table while pulling it out of your bag.

 

You might also notice a bump in the performance of the machine when switching to an SSD. Bump that; you will notice an improvement.

[G+_Donald Kloss]

I'll probably install an ssd when I build a new pc right now out of my budget just want to get this laptop running good so I can continue my 3d printing and running fusion 360 I'm going to upgrade the memory also I believe I can go to 8gb ram chip

[G+_Jim Hofmann]

Had an old ASUS doing something similar. Ran every AV and scan tool I could think of. Pulled the battery to do a hard reset but didn't put it back. Problem went away. Thought the reset did it. Put the battery back in and the problem came back, took it out and after a few minutes the disk and system settled down. I assUme it was a bad interrupt issue, charge/no charge. Just saying don't overlook the weird shtuff. Easy check.