Jane Mathis

Can anyone please help me?

Sorry for the long wait; I had totally forgotten about my thread. I have almost always used Safe Mode, which automatically disables all startup programs, since the slow performance started happening. The errors do occur. Also, a benchmarking application gives a speed of 3 MB/sec. Benchmark applications, when set on high priority, should not be affected by startup programs. I already did countless virus scans. The only "malware" found was a Widget Workshop help file, which I deleted just to be on the safe side. Note that since it's a GDI+ error, it could also be a poorly-written printer driver too - just throwing that out there. When the errors started occurring, I had not installed any printers in over a year. I tried Safe Mode, but the problem still occurs. Slowness is USUALLY NOT A HARDWARE PROBLEM, *unless* it's a bad HDD, bad IDE cable or bad IDE controller. The first thing I would do, because it mentions I/O error, is to check the system event log for disk errors or IDE controller-related errors. You may have a bad HDD. Here are the event logs in a zip file. Import them into Event viewer. CLICK HERE I have tried many benchmarking applications (most notably HD Tune and HDD Scan). The only weird thing I noticed was that with HDD Scan, Verify operations (which do not send the data to any other part of the computer, download it and read the manual for more details) worked at a speed of 40 MB/sec (55 at the beginning of the drive, 30 at the end), and Read operations, which send the data to the rest of the computer, worked at a speed of 3 MB/sec throughout. The weird thing is that when I average the Verify operations, I get within 1 MB/sec of the speed that my hard drive used to work at. Also, the HD Tune benchmark results using default settings: Transfer Speed: Minimum: 1.8 MB/sec Maximum: 3.2 MB/sec Average: 3.1 MB/sec Access Time: 14.3 ms Burst Rate: 3.2 MB/sec CPU Usage: 47.6% The access time is perfectly normal, but the speeds are low and the CPU usage is extreme (since I have a Hyper-Threading Pentium 4, 50% is the maximum most single processes can take up) Here is the SMART data (it's a little messy, sorry): HDDScan S.M.A.R.T. Report Model: WDC WD1600BB-98DWA0 Firmware: 15.05R15 Serial: WD-WMAEK2784116 LBA: 312581808 Report By: HDDScan for Windows version 3.1 Report Date: 11/6/2008 9:22:30 PM Num Attribute Name Value Worst Raw(hex) Threshold 001 Raw Read Error Rate 200 177 00000000-0000 051 003 Spin Up Time 151 143 00000000-0B96 021 004 Start/Stop Count 094 094 00000000-1AD1 040 005 Reallocation Sector Count 195 195 00000000-004B 140 007 Seek Error Rate 200 200 00000000-0000 051 009 PowerOn Hours Count 093 093 00000000-155A 000 010 Spin Retry Count 100 100 00000000-0000 051 011 Recalibration Retries 100 100 00000000-0000 051 012 Device Power Cycle Count 094 094 00000000-1A01 000 194 HDA Temperature 114 253 36 C 000 196 Reallocation Event Count 184 184 00000000-0010 000 197 Current Pending Sector Count 200 200 00000000-0001 000 198 Uncorrectable Sector Count 200 200 00000000-0000 000 199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 253 00000000-0000 000 200 Write Error Rate 200 155 00000000-0000 051

About a month ago my computer started acting really slow and it has just gotten worse. Around the beginning of the week it totally stopped responding sometimes and 10 minutes later responded but gave me an error message saying GDI+ Window: explorer.exe - Application error. The instruction at "0x4ec95695" referenced memory at "0x4ec62ef4". The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of "0xc0000185". Click on OK to terminate the program. Click on CANCEL to debug the program. The first two numbers are different each time but usually begin with 0x4. The last number is always the same. The process affected is usually explorer.exe, but it is been different about 10-30% of the time. I have tried defragmenting and virus scanning with Norton. Please help me as soon as possible.