Comment Re:Check the HDD (Score 1) 835
Very commonly this happens when a hard drive reverts to PIO mode after Windows decides it has seen a few errors from the drive. You can verify this by looking at the properties of the IDE Controller to which the drive is connected in device manager. (IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers/Primary IDE Channel/Advanced Settings tab, for example)
There is a VBScript that resets the drive back to DMA mode, and is effective if that is indeed the case.
This could also be an early sign of hard drive failure. I've seen plenty of drives that passed diagnostics but were very, very slow. Try checking the SMART data with something like HDTune.
Hey, going to try this right now. I just took a look and saw that my drive is indeed in PIO mode. I have been having the exact same problems as the OP.
