Win7 64 bit crawling..

[#1]

Hi all
Right my win7 machine is driving me nuts! It's becoming so painfully slow that I'm almost considering reinstalling it  It must be said though, this machine is two years old and I've never reinstalled windows once yet so it's done well. If possible I'd like to keep it going though!
I've done the usual tricks, cleaning out the temp files, tried defragging (it says 0% fragmented), trimmed down the stuff at startup and all the other stuff I'd try in previous systems but nothing seems to be speeding up this machine. The CPU monitor frequently shows it at less than 50% usage yet the hard drive is rumbling away crazily obviously doing something yet there is no apparent reason for it 
With winXP I'd know where to start looking and dealing with things. Despite using Win7 for two years I still don't know it as well as I should. Where do I start? (No registry cleaner suggestions please - I won't use them).
Thanks for reading!

[#2]

A number of things
How much of your C: drive is being used
Do you have a backup system such as Acronis installed
Are your documents stored on the C: drive or another drive/partition.
If on another drive or partition how much space is used on that
Is it going slow on bootup only or in normal use. If in normal use which programs are you seeing the slowdown worst in
How much memory do you have in the computer and what is the graphics card
Which Security package do you use

[#3]

The hard drive activity when idle sounds like SuperFetch doing what it's designed to do - reading files from the disk into memory that it thinks you'll need. It's not supposed to slow things down, because it's low priority I/O and stops when you do something. It's not necessarily the problem.

[#4]

Have you tried deleting the Page file then defragging?

[#5]

I knew I'd forgotten something.. the disk cleanup wizard. Look how much I have in these places  :o:

@OJ:

No backup system installed / running
I have a backup of things on the c drive but I don't actually use it (thinking about it thats a year old so useless anyway - I should delete it). My files are stored on a network disk (except the stuff lurking on the desktop).
Two other partitions - recovery data
Going slow both bootup and normal use. General slowdown in the actual OS thats the worst!
2GB ram but it appears that 1/4Gb used for graphics::

I use avast (which does randomly become a memory and disk hog - I've noted this on several occassions).
@ejs: I don't think it's that as the disk rumbles when I'm using the machine although it gets worse when I'm away from it.
@Mav: Not a clue how to be honest!

[#6]

1.75Gb isn't a lot for W7 64-bit. How much is actually in use?
The W7x64 system I'm using now has 4GB and is using 1.58GB doing very little (just posting here).
If it had just 1.75GB I'd expect it to run like a dog at 90% RAM usage when doing little or nothing.

[#7]

Page file:
Control Panel - System then click on Advanced System Settings.
Then click on Advanced the Performance Settings.
In the Advanced tab under Virtual Memory click change.
Make a note of the current settings then select 'No paging file' and click on Set.
You will need to reboot but the Page file will be deleted and you can defrag again.
Then just follow the instructions above again and reset the page file to it's original settings.

[#8]

Quote from: Sprite

I use avast (which does randomly become a memory and disk hog - I've noted this on several occasions).

Remove it and use MSE, it's lighter.
And, more importantly, see my previous post on RAM size/usage. 

[#9]

The basic problem is that the machine is under specified for Win 7 http://www.simplyacer.com/eMachines_EL1352_1048566.html#DetailTop
The first thing to address is the type of desktop - you should delete Aero http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-aero-on-windows-vista/
The next is that you need to increase the installed RAM from the 2GB you have to the maximum of 4GB

[#10]

The fact that Sprite indicated it has slowed down after two years led me to check the page file.
I agree that 2GB is nowhere near enough but it seems to have worked for some time but I bet the page file has become either too badly fragmented or corrupt. Maybe it was initially set too small?

[#11]

Quote from: HPsauce

1.75Gb isn't a lot for W7 64-bit. How much is actually in use? The W7x64 system I'm using now has 4GB and is using 1.58GB doing very little (just posting here). If it had just 1.75GB I'd expect it to run like a dog at 90% RAM usage when doing little or nothing.

This is my live cpu and memory meter gadget - the large one is the CPU and the small one is the memory:

Task manager:

As you can see the TM doesn't seem to indicate the machine is worked overly hard (I'm not into video editing, resource intensive games etc) but the system just seems sluggish - especially when shutting down which is actually slower than starting up  
@Mav: Cheers will try that out tomorrow and see what happens!
@OJ: I tried disabling aero earlier and it just seemed to make the system even slower - I've re-enabled it and its back to its normal sluggish speed again. Weird huh?
Can't upgrade the ram at the mo (no work to pay for it lol) but I can't complain too much as this machine (inc monitor, KB and mouse) cost less than win7 itself and I mean less than half the price on that link you quoted

[#12]

Modern hard drives have a failure mode where accessing certain areas of the disk become like swimming through treacle.  The operation succeeds eventually but takes such a long time that the computer slows to a crawl.  I suggest you try a full five-stage chkdsk and watch to see if there are points at which it progresses very slowly.  Back-up your data before you do this as this operation could push a failing hard drive over the edge.

[#13]

Yes I know what thats like, I've had failing drives previously. This isn't a failing drive (and chkdsk says the same thing) however despite the lack of CPU and memory usage it seems that the system is nearly always busy.
Seems to be a bit better since the disk cleanup and erasing the recycle bin so I will see how it performs today and let you all know.
Thanks again,
Sprite

[#14]

I would definitely change the AV protection in use, I've seen so many systems where that has become corrupted in some way and giving strange symptoms such as this.
As noted above, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and low-overhead.

[#15]

HPsauce is right.  If you do not want to get rid of your current security software then at the very least you should uninstall it, see if that makes a difference, and then re-install it again.