I'm having issues with my PC and looking for some help

[glarby person]

Hello, Steam!
So lately my PC has been acting weird. Programs have been taking a long time to load, most of the time when watching videos, my Adobe Flash Player will crash, and sometimes continue to not work until I restart my computer. And speaking of restarting my computer, a lot of the time when the Flash Player crashes is when things start to go downhill. It could be because of my impatience, but when the Player crashes, things start to slow down and sometimes not even open. This will cause me to ctrl+alt+delete, which then brings me to a black screen. From here, I have to hold down the power button until my computer shuts down. When I load my PC back up, it takes longer than usual for my desktop to be set up, usually loading my taskbar and nothing else for a good while.
A lot of the time when Adobe Flash Player crashes, the audio is the first to mess up. It will get all fuzzy until it eventually stops with the video following.

I have updated Adobe Flash Player to the latest version and have updated my GPU to the latest drivers.

Specs:
CPU: AMD A10-5800K
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7800 series (7850)
Mobo: ASRock FM2A55M-DGS
8gb of RAM

Thanks,
Flying Cattle

[The Giving One]

Have you done an antivirus search to try to eliminate that as a possibility ?

Do you have many programs running at the same time ?

What is your OS ?

EDIT...are all your drivers up to date ?

is windows up to date ?

How about your hard drive ? is it fragmented in the case of a HDD ?

[Muppet among Puppets]

Look in taskmanager what occupies your computer. (maybe not the default windows one, as its not very informative)
Otherwise it might point to the hard drive.

[The Giving One]

You may also consider scheduleing a disk check for your hard drive as it could be having problems and about to fail....

How old is the hard drive ?

[glarby person]

I'll run a antivirus scan before I go to bed tonight.
My OS is Windows 7 64bit.
I believe all my drivers are up to date. I can check. Any easy way to do that?
I'm not sure if my HDD is fragmented, and it's about 2-3 years old.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Use defragmentation function of windows.

[The Giving One]

You may want to consider backing up anything you are worried about losing if you can do that just in case your HDD is in fact failing....just an idea...

About drivers, just do not get them from the microsoft website unless you have not other choice...get them from the manufacturer of the hardware you are updating the driver for.

Google can help you some with this also....just ask for specific help here concerning one piece of hardware at a time if you cannot do it yourself and we will try to help you.

EDIT...I would do a backup before the defragment if you decide to degragment the drive....my advice anyways.

OH !...and are you sure you have an HDD and not a SSD ? NEVER defrag a SSD.

[glarby person]

Thank you guys for the help! I will try these! :D
I WISH I had an SSD :P
What exactly is defragging an HDD?

[The Giving One]

You are welcome...and respectfully, google searching that question is best if you want to learn about it...

And just so you are aware in case this thread gets moved, there is a hardware and operating system forum here where users can help in the case of hardware problems with your computer.

But as long as the mods here do not mind, we can just continue here in this thread in this forum.

Post back with what you try and any changes to help us to help you....

[TirithRR]

Flying Cattle původně napsal:

What exactly is defragging an HDD?

An HDD is a collection of "Sectors" When files are stored to an HDD, they fill the sectors.

As files are deleted, copied, moved, etc, sectors are erased and rewritten. You end up with a "fragmented" HDD. Instead of files being grouped together in single blocks of sectors, a single file may be broken up and strewn across many groups of sectors.

Since an HDD works by having a mechanical head read each sector to read a file, when the files span multiple groups it takes longer to read the file because the head has to physically move farther.

Defragmenting an HDD reorganizes the files so that they are all grouped in as many continuous sector groups as possible.

[glarby person]

Thanks again, all! I will report back with an update!

[红孩儿十八赢]

Try re-installing your OS.

[The Giving One]

飒沓如流星 původně napsal:

Try re-installing your OS.

This is overkill right now...and if he has hardware failing on his PC this solves nothing.

[glarby person]

So my drivers seem to be up to date, as well as Windows. I switched from Firefox to Chrome, and the Adobe Flash Player crashing has reduced significantly.
Though, just last night while playing League of Legends, my audio got really fuzzy and the game slowed down until it froze. The only thing I could do was hold down my power button until my PC was shut down. But my desktop did load-up a lot faster than it had in the past.
I just finished an anti-virus quick scan with 0 threats found. I'm still not sure what the issue is.

[sic]

..