My lady's Dell Vostro 1500 is now getting on for 3 or so yrs old. It has 2GB RAM (top of the range when bought) so shouldn't need to page too much (but is is encumbered with Vista), yet after an hour of use with 3+ programs running, switching between a pdf and MS Word for example will take up to 30 seconds, whilst the HDD light goes nuts and much clicking can be heard. When she gets fed up and reboots, it is almost tragic watching chrome take 10 seconds just to close one tab.

The plan is to replace the laptop entirely if we win the lottery. However, in this parallel universe where we clearly won't, I'm looking to replace it at some point (on hold due to the SSD price hike) with the same type 64GB Crucial M225 I put in her desktop. Her entire HDD contents only reach 39GB.

So,

1) is there anything software-related I can do? I enforce defragging every couple of weeks, and have run CCleaner. but have little experience of more in-depth maintenance. Windows and antivirus etc are always fully updated, which provides an amusing 2hr distraction

2) the clicking noise when the computer spins the hard disc has always been rather loud, but seems to be getting even worse. Do I need to sprint to the nearest computer shop that stocks any old 2.5" HDD and leap across the aisle yelling "noooooooo..." to get a replacement ASAP? Or will be OK for a few more months? The important documents are backed up to a USB HDD but I don't have any experience of saving a system image (except in Win7 which does everything for me, bless it)

My mate solved such problems by installing XP and the Dell drivers, but that's the drastic solution

Is it a corrupt sector on the hard disk maybe?

I'm not sure how I'd find out...

*hangs head in shame*

I'm afraid it doesn't sound healthy, and constant re-seeking of a bad drive can slow it down dramatically. Be very sure you do have backups of anything important, because one day soon it probably won't boot up.

There's usually a free version of some drive imaging software on the front of a computer magazine, which is where I've always got mine from. There are also many free options:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities ... mage.shtml

Somebody here will know of a good checker maybe, and I'm only guessing that's the cause, so...

A couple of things to try:

• Check the event viewer (start / run / eventvwr) it'll report any bad sectors
• Run chkdsk (start / run / chkdsk)

If I were you I'd back up all the data on that disk that you care about ASAP.

Sounds like it could be disk indexing rebuilding the index all the time, this can happen, and severely hampoers normal use. Right click on properties on the drive and unclick 'index this drive' and it ignore the few files (you have to click to do this) and let it 'un index' the drive.

Then go into services.msc and isable Windows Search and also Superfetch.

Make sure you have SP1 and SP2 on there also, then use Contig and Power Defrag to defrag the drive.

That might help.

Thanks everyone, I'll get on the case!