Overnight My Laptop Is Slow

[Si Le Monde]

I use my laptop for school and gaming. Its an Asus X53E and it has been working fine until yesterday. I primarily play Team Fortress 2 on my laptop and the game has been running fine. Now when I play tf2 I get horrible frame rate drops and as a rule the frame rate is horrible. This was never the case before. Seemingly overnight my laptop is poor at running Team Fortress 2.

What I have Tried;
- DeFragmenting the drive
- Running a drive check
- Generally clearing up my C drive
- Restarting computer (Not sure if this is important; I restarted my computer once I noticed performance problems and on load-up my computer ran a drive check (C))
- Scan with Malwarebytes

I am fairly certain there is a problem with my computer and not internet connection because my ping throughout the performance problems has been low (20-50). I greatly appreciate any help anyone is willing to give me! Thank you for your time and help.

EDIT: OS is windows 7

 

[RobWHS]

HD could be on it's way out, try repair install if you have the disk.

 

[William Henrickson]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

 

[Si Le Monde]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

 

[RobWHS]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

What's the make of the HD?

 

[Si Le Monde]

HD could be on it's way out, try repair install if you have the disk.

Unfortunately I don't have the disk. I would like to look into your suspicion of the HD failing. I think this might be the case. Do you know of a way I can check to see if indeed the hard drive is failing

 

[RobWHS]

HD could be on it's way out, try repair install if you have the disk.

Unfortunately I don't have the disk. I would like to look into your suspicion of the HD failing. I think this might be the case. Do you know of a way I can check to see if indeed the hard drive is failing

Need the HD make

 

[Si Le Monde]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

What's the make of the HD?

I am not to good with computers ;_; Please excuse my ignorance.... What to you mean by that last line? Unfortunately I dont understand what you mean by "Make of the Hard Drive?".

 

[William Henrickson]

Monitor temps/task manager/gpu-z. after that start looking at windows and drivers.

 

[RobWHS]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

What's the make of the HD?

I am not to good with computers ;_; Please excuse my ignorance.... What to you mean by that last line? Unfortunately I dont understand what you mean by "Make of the Hard Drive?".

Hard drive brand. Toshiba / Western Digital / Hitachi etc.......I ask because some have tools to scan your HD for errors.

 

[Si Le Monde]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

What's the make of the HD?

I am not to good with computers ;_; Please excuse my ignorance.... What to you mean by that last line? Unfortunately I dont understand what you mean by "Make of the Hard Drive?".

Hard drive brand. Toshiba / Western Digital / Hitachi etc.......I ask because some have tools to scan your HD for errors.

I am pretty sure it is Western Digital. That is the stock one that is put in my laptop model, so i assume that is the one in there. I haven't replaced it myself, and I bought it at best buy so odds are that is the manufacturer. Is that what you are looking for?

 

[RobWHS]

Could be dust buildup or thermal paste failing causing throttling, or could be something like Flash player or Chrome using the GPU in the background.

I am fairly certain it is not dust buildup. I cleaned the laptop about a month ago due to fan problems. As far a something running in the background on the GPU/CPU i doubt. I don't have a dedicated graphics card and I have monitored my CPU usage while playing. Nothing is using a significant amount of processing other than hl2.exe (tf2). Thanks for your help though. I think it might be that my Hard Drive is failing. If you (or anyone) knows of a way I can check to be certain it would be really helpful!

What's the make of the HD?

I am not to good with computers ;_; Please excuse my ignorance.... What to you mean by that last line? Unfortunately I dont understand what you mean by "Make of the Hard Drive?".

Hard drive brand. Toshiba / Western Digital / Hitachi etc.......I ask because some have tools to scan your HD for errors.

I am pretty sure it is Western Digital. That is the stock one that is put in my laptop model, so i assume that is the one in there. I haven't replaced it myself, and I bought it at best buy so odds are that is the manufacturer. Is that what you are looking for?

That's the info I was after

Download this utility from the WD website and do a full scan for errors.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=612&sid=3

 

[William Henrickson]

The entire team fortress game is 700mb or so. I doubt it is the HDD. The windows startup would be so slow...

 

[RobWHS]

The entire team fortress game is 700mb or so. I doubt it is the HDD. The windows startup would be so slow...

Not neccesarily. I've encountered all sorts of erratic behaviour with hard drives coming to their end of life.
Best to scan and rule it out though.

 

[bembene]

hey,
I say go search for virus.