My new Lenovo T410 has slowed to a crawl. How do I fix it?

Question

I've been using Windows for over 18 years now and consider myself a power user. This laptop is about 6 months old) specs:

• 4 GB RAM and
• running Windows 7 enterprise
• with a 120 GB solid state drive.
• Intel Core i5 M520, 2.4 GHz.

It was quite spiffy in the beginning but now it's become very slow – the boot takes a lot of time, app load times are high, Loading the font chooser is slow, copying files from 1 directory to another directory is very slow (at about 25 KB/second).

I have about 50 GB free disk space.

What can I do to make it faster (like earlier)? It is probably 3-4 times slower than earlier.

What have I done so far? Other than looking at the task manager(and perfmon) regularly, not much. I know that I can run

1. chkdsk
2. disk de-fragmenter

What tools/procedures are available to fix the rot?

---

UPDATE : output of Smartmon's after short self test

C:\Program Files (x86)\smartmontools\bin>smartctl -a sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [i686-w64-mingw32-win7(64)] (sf-win32-5.41-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     SAMSUNG MMCRE28G8MXP-0VBL1
Serial Number:    S0ENNEAZ724347
Firmware Version: VBM1EL1Q
User Capacity:    128,035,676,160 bytes [128 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   7
ATA Standard is:  ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1
Local Time is:    Wed Jul 27 22:12:49 2011 IST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                                        was never started.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                (  240) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   4) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (  24) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1343
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       827
175 Program_Fail_Count_Chip 0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
176 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip   0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0013   099   099   017    Pre-fail  Always       -       29
178 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip  0x0013   080   080   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       12
179 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot   0x0013   098   098   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       48
180 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot 0x0013   098   098   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       3792
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   253   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x003a   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       292698
234 Unknown_Attribute       0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
235 Unknown_Attribute       0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
236 Unknown_Attribute       0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       121
237 Unknown_Attribute       0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       351
238 Unknown_Attribute       0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      1342         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.


C:\Program Files (x86)\smartmontools\bin>

UPDATE 2:

C:>fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
DisableDeleteNotify = 0

Also, after I noticed that once the CPU usage went high, I disabled the "Windows Search" service.

What else should I be doing ?

Answer 1

Given that you have checked a lot already, it might be a possibility that there is actually nothing wrong with the software/programs but that the SSD itself is causing the slowness.

Given the information I found here and here it seems this SSD has no TRIM support but relies on its internal garbage collector. Maybe you should give your computer some hours with at least disk I/O as possible so it has a chance to execute a run.

Switch the power plan to Maximized (so it's not sent to sleep), disable any network connections (no new Updates), disable the anti-virus software and logoff. Then give it a night, turn everything on again and see if it's getting better.

Answer 2

Maybe cooling issues, that's what it narrows down in my case usually when it comes to Lenovos. Check if your fan works, check system settings and disable services you don't use in msconfig utility (google it), try to use some less resource demanding security solution such as AVG or NOD32 instead of Symantec od F-Secure, defragment your HDD, update drivers.

Answer 3

Based on the info, it sounds like a hard drive sub-system bottleneck of some kind.

As for tools to check out system troubles/slowness, have you checked out Windows 7's in-built Resource Monitor? (Start→All Programs→Accessories→System Tools→Resource Monitor, or just use the search box :) )

Answer 4

It would help if you looked into task-manager and checked whether for all users there are any unreasonable values in the columns : CPU, Working Set (Memory), Handles, Threads, USER Objects, GDI Objects, I/O Reads, I/O Writes.

Sort descending on each column, and also watch for active processes whose columns' values keep on updating even when the computer is idle.

You could also test whether the problem arrives when booting in Safe mode. If it does not, then the slowdown is caused by some product that you have installed. You will then need to disable all installed products one-by-one, starting probably with the security-oriented ones. Autoruns for Windows will be useful here.

If Safe mode does not fix the problem, maybe the problem is in the hard disk. Try to find a disk-health test product from the manufacturer of your SSD (only the manufacturer can be trusted to reliably access the S.M.A.R.T. data of an SSD).

Virus infection is also always a possibility : Run scans using several antivirus products.