Laptop gradually becomes unresponsive – HDD damage?

[Ysquanir]

Howdy folks!

In my laptop I have a Samsung 840 EVO SSD (system) and a WD Blue HDD (WDC WD10JPVX-22JC3T0, data). I did a clean install of Win 10 x64 with the Anniversary update in late September. I previously did not have the update, because the automatic updater refused to find it for some reason.

In the last 2 weeks I have started having problems while working with data on the HDD (maybe there were some realier, but I didn't notice/pay attention). For example, I would be listening to music, then VLC would become unresponsive. I would try to shut it down through task manager, but that would not work, or it could become unresponsive itself. A few steps later I would work my way to where Win shell itself becomes frozen and at that point hard shutdown is the only option. This has happened while attempting to both write to the disk (extracting archives, saving documents in LibreOffice...) or reading from it (playing games, listening to music...).

I have checked the drive with chkdsk and WD's own Data LifeGuard program's extended tests. Both completed successfully and neither found any errors. However, I left HDDScan's surface test run overnight today and it got stuck just like those other programs at 56%.

This would seem to indicate that the HDD is damaged, but the proximity to getting the Win 10 update and its flaky reputation (I have had some problems myself, programs would not execute or shutdown correctly and sometimes it becomes stuck while shutting down/restarting) prevent me from calling it for sure.

What's your opinion, guys & gals? Is it the HDD or could it be the OS? What should I do next?

 

[webworkings]

Were it me, I would try going back to the OS prior to your update and see if this resolves the problem.

 

[Ysquanir]

Were it me, I would try going back to the OS prior to your update and see if this resolves the problem.

Thanks for replying. Yeah, I guess that's the most sensible course of action. Do you have any idea where I could find an ISO without the update already included?

 

[webworkings]

Try here. https/www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download

 

[Ysquanir]

Try here. https/www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download

Unless I'm missing a section of that site with older downloads, it won't help – the utility downloads ISOs with AU already included. Fortunately, it looks like I won't have to reinstall after all.

I was searching around for a solution to another problem when I happened upon this: https/www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3bfhxk/windows_10_gets_stuck_on_the_restarting_screen/

net stop wuauserv
cd %systemroot%
ren SoftwareDistribution SD.old
net start wuauserv

I have also installed Intel RST driver from Acer's website. One or both of these has seemingly fixed my problems (I didn't think of checking after each one) – I haven't had any issues since, even when I tried installing/extracting the DoW Ultimate Apocalypse mod, which had a 100% failure rate before those tweaks. Hopefully it will stay that way.

Even though I figured it out on my own in the end, I would like to thank you for taking time to help me, I really appreciate it

 

[jsmithepa]

A classical sign of constant swapping (high HD usage, running out of RAM, leaky Apps), OR dying HD. Backup immediately and run a S.M.A.R.T. monitor.

 

[Ysquanir]

A classical sign of constant swapping (high HD usage, running out of RAM, leaky Apps), OR dying HD. Backup immediately and run a S.M.A.R.T. monitor.

I didn't notice any abnormal RAM usage and SMART stats are in the green. I have all of my important stuff backed up, but as I have written in my previous post, the issue seems to have stemmed either from some Windows Update bug or Intel RST not being installed, and has now been fixed.

I would like to close this thread, but I can't pick my post as an answer. Is there any way to do it? Otherwise, could one of you please repost my solution so that I can pick it as the answer?

 

[webworkings]

I chose yours as the solution.