I see that this section is labeled for Hardware specifically, but is it also allowed for software questions as well? Or should I post something like this in the misc. sub-forum or even in the General Chat?

Can post here. Should be fine.

Unless ur asking if trillian is best I'm software, that's for general chat

Well here is my deal:

I have a Toshiba Satellite c55-a5220. I've rarely had any problems with it at all. about a week ago, out of nowhere, everything became incredibly slow, to the point where some apps would not even run at all. Certain times things would act like they were trying to run/start, but when going into task manager it showed them up but not actually doing anything at all. I have tried many things to fix this as I have no earthly idea what it could even be. I've ran multiple virus-scanning programs, both of which have found and deleted some viruses, but nothing that was causing the problem. I have tried defragging my whole computer, didn't work. I still have no idea if it's even a virus at all that is causing this or something there. Even after a reset, while it sits idle on the desktop with no apps running, it's still using 50% CPU power. In task manager I found what was using that 50%, and after some research found other people complaining about my exact same problem with a certain program using lots of their CPU. As my main account is not an Admin and there apparently is no way to change that, and I don't have access to an Admin account (aside from the Guest account) I am very limited to what actions I can do. The solution other people found for their problem was 1 of 2 things. Either the Windows Updated was the problem and all they had to do was end the process (which required Admin) or certain event logs were full and needed to be empty. (Also required Admin). In the Guest account, I was able to end the Windows Update process which got rid of almost all of the CPU usage. But unfortunately, that did not seem to help in increasing the speed at all. So I am still unaware of what is causing this.

Unfortunately, as well, I cannot simply just wipe the computer clean back to factory settings, because as luck would have it, there is a specific file needed to do that that is either missing or corrupted. In order to perform the reset, I would need a copy of Windows to reinstall it, which I don't have. And this laptop isnt even worth spending the money on something like that. Honestly at this point it seems like my best choice is to just scrap it. Remove the hard drive and sell the shell for what little I can get out of it and go buy a new laptop. However, I'm still very curious as to what really is causing this problem, because I'm sure no matter what it is, there just has to be a way to get it fixed back into working order. Especially since to my knowledge I didn't even do anything to allow this to happen. IF there is some way to fix, I would like to see if anyone here is knowledgeable enough to help since everything I have found online so far has failed.

Download speccy and post a screenshot. Sounds more like a ram issue than a cpu issue.

I'm thinking one of 3 things atm..
1. Bad hard drive
2. Bad ram
3. Cpu temp too high causing throttling

Speccy screenshot would confirm bad ram or not and verify idle temps are at least somewhat reasonable

Next step would be to download crystaldisk info and screenshot that as well. This will determine drive health and whether or not the drive is going to go or not.

Last, screenshot task manager so we can see which programs are chewing on cpu cycles


Disk check and memtest are next steps probably, but we can only determine that once the 3 above screenshots are provided

This post was edited by Penguins0690 on Mar 21 2017 06:29pm

I'll try this once I can. I'm currently using a different laptop that was given to me. I reset this one back to factory settings as soon as I got it, and oddly enough it seemed to have almost the same problems, but worse. Once I was able to download/install the Windows Updates (194 of them) that seemed to fixed the lag issues. So I have been attempting to do the same on my old laptop, but it confuses me. It tells me with my current settings, that all Windows Updates are automatically downloaded, but ask for my permission to be installed. Yet it also tells me that it has it has never once checked for an update and has never once installed an update. I've had that laptop for over a year, and never once have I seen it download or ask me to install any updates, ever. So I've tried to check for updates a few times now, and every time I try, it will sit there saying (Checking for updates) forever, until I reset my laptop. It never finds anything but always continues to check. It makes no sense. And like right now, I'm attempting to restart my laptop, but as the updates, it just sits on the screen claiming it's "restarting" but It will never actually do anything, forcing me to do a hard shutdown.

As I said, I will try and run those programs as soon as I can and will post the results. Also, thanks for trying to help me out. I really appreciate it.

After performing yet another hard shut down, my computer has informed me that my PC needs to repaired because an important file is either missing or corrupted. (File: \windows\system32\winload.efi Error code:0xc0000001) Now, this has come up a few times in the past during these issues, and after simply resetting it a few times I was able to get past it and back into the system. (By the way, this was the same error message I used to get back when I first got this laptop and tried, and failed, to reset it back to factory settings, because that file was missing or corrupted) Unfortunately, now it seems I am unable to get past this. I have reset it multiple times and every time the same message comes up. So, I guess it's just completely fucked now and I must toss the hard drive and sell the shell. :/

Sounds like a failed drive. If you have someone who owns a desktop PC, you can plug your laptop drive into their computer and pull the files you need to save.

You don't necessarily have to junk the pc. Just buy a new hard drive or ssd, install OS and put files on USB back on the drive.

250 GB SSD is like $70
1 TB hard drive is like $55

I'd pick SSD if u don't need much space, they're much faster.
Can scrap too and get a new one as well.

Feel free to post your budget and we can find best bang for buck in most cases.

I already had pulled anything off of it that I wanted/needed before it failed, luckily. So the hard drive is basically junk now. As the for laptop itself, It's not working putting any amount of money in to. I'm just going to sell it as is without the hard drive of course and just get whatever I can get from it. I don't even NEED a second laptop. I was just using it for the time being to connect to my TV so I can use it for Netflix or whatever.