My laptop is running slow. It started around Wednesday last week. When I say slow it has difficult running winamp and playing an mp3.

Now On Wednesday I cant remember any windows updates coming in. Or any updates for other programs, except maybe the daily AVG 7.5 update.

So I thought it might be a program, I looked a the task manager and theres nothing dodgy running in there. Sure I do have about 50 processes running, but thats nothing from the norm.

I did a clean boot, just loading windows and not connecting to the Internet.  It still had difficulty running. I cant find any program that would be causing, unless I cant remember a windows update. I dont have Windows Restore turned on as I dont like it.

I turned DEP off but thats not fixed the problem. I have speeded it up a little bit by taking a few programs that werent needed from the startup.

Im thinking now it could be the processor, I tried MBM but it doesnt have the Toshiba M40 in the list and will only pick up the clock speed up, no temps. I installed Hmonitor and that picked up 2 temps in 10 mins a 20degree C and 17C which I find difficult to believe.

Im also thinking... could the 1.4GHz be damaged some how, the clock speed still being the same and the processor just not processing enough data some how? Is there a program that would tell me what my CPU is actually processing? like the flops?

I might take my laptop apart and see if the fan is actually turning as it could also be that I suppose. I assume there is a fan on the CPU

Get sisoft sandra or something, superpi maybe and compare with similar systems. hdtach might be worth trying to.

im thinking your hard disk is knackered, theyre the first things to go in any system to be honest.

I ran Sandra on the CPU... From what I can find out the FLOPS are are the same as what it should be.

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 4043MIPS
Whetstone iSSE2 : 3328MFLOPS
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance vs. Speed
Dhrystone ALU : 2.90MIPS/MHz
Whetstone iSSE2 : 2.38MFLOPS/MHz
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance Test Status
Run ID : Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor         1.40GHz (1.40GHz, 1MB L2, 400MHz FSB)
Platform Compliance : x86
NUMA Support : No
SMP (Multi-Processor) Benchmark : No
Total Test Threads : 1
Multi-Core Test : No
SMT (Multi-Threaded) Benchmark : No
Processor Affinity : P0C0T0
System Timer : 3.58MHz
Number of Runs : 64000 / 640

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor         1.40GHz
Speed : 1.40GHz
Cores per Processor : 1 Unit(s)
L2 On-board Cache : 1MB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 4-way, 64 byte line size

Features
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : No
Supplemental SSE3 Technology : No
SSE4.1 Technology : No
SSE4.2 Technology : No
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with real-life performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Warning 5009 : Mobile processors yield lower indexes in power management modes. Check power settings if index is low.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

I installed the new hard drive today

And it works fine now

Took no time at all with the original Toshiba ghost disk.

Ive just ordered a USB enclosure for the older hard drive so Ill be putting that in there and getting my stuff off there.

careful.... external usb drives need to be FAT32 to work.... youre pretty screwed if its NTFS iirc !

nah. all 3 of mine are NTFS formatted.  

My external is NTFS. XP64.