I am pretty sure I pissed of some eldritch deity because I have been chasing this laggy feeling I had with my pc for 2 months.

But in the past few days my desktop was getting very slow during installationand general use. At the same time my HDD activity indicator would be on all the time. Turning off the pc would shut it down and a few seconds later restart.

So I switched out Fedora for Pop OS and everything went fine for half a day and the problemen came back again.

When turning off the pc, right now, I got what you see in the picture.

So I would like to ask do I need to hire an exorcist or is hardware borked in someway?

Any help would be greatly appreciatie, so I would like to thank anyone even willing to look at my post.

EDIT: Well for anyone still interested, apparently it was something in the 6.5 series kernals that made my pc behave weird because with 6.6 kernal all of the problems vanished. I want to thank everyone again for all the suggestion and help diagnosing my problem.

  • @mark3748
    12•7 months ago

    Looks like failing storage. You may be able to initiate a SMART self-test from the BIOS, or you can use the manufacturers tools. Seatools works on non-seagate drives and has a live USB option.

    Do the short test first, if it passes, do the long one to confirm. Short test takes about 15 minutes usually, the long one can take a couple of hours.

    • @[email protected]
      4•7 months ago

      I doubt this is storage. It looks more like some platform kernel or firmware bug. Another poster mentioned that it didn’t happen on their machine until after an apt update so there’s more indication.

      While a SMART drive test never hurts I think this one is something else.

      • @mark3748
        5•7 months ago

        They switched distros and still had issues. That and the general slowdown with high disk usage is a classic sign of failing drives.

        Chasing hardware issues by playing with software only wastes time, so ruling out the hardware first is a good idea

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•7 months ago

      Thank you so much for your fast response. I can’t find any bios option for testing so I will have to do it with external software. Should I only test the boot drive or also the storage drive?

      • @mark3748
        2•7 months ago

        I would probably test both, just to be sure, but I wouldn’t bother with the long test on anything but the system drive unless you suspect a problem with it. The quick test is usually sufficient at catching most issues.

        Since you’re looking at data corruption that persists between installs, your boot drive and memory are the most likely culprits. If the test says the drive is fine, then memory tests are next.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•7 months ago

          I do not know if this aides with diagnosis while I try to get the bootable usb to work (my pc doesn’t recognise the program when I boot from the usb). But in bios my ram is detected 32gb but in the os it is detected as 31.19gb.

          • @[email protected]English
            2•7 months ago

            First the delta in reported storage is normal. Drives are sold in multiples of “1000” but computers work in multiples of “1024”. This is why a 32gb drive shows as a little bit less than that. Second the basic start up and config on the motherboard has an old way “BIOS” and a new way “UEFI”. You need to make sure your motherboard knows how to talk to the config on the USB. Safe bet is to use “BIOS” as most newer systems will understand the old and the new way. You may have tell the bios to allow booting bios/legacy .

            • @[email protected]OP
              2•7 months ago

              Sorry if it was not clear, I was talking about my ram. I have 32gb of ddr3 ram that shows slightly more than 32gb in UEFI and 31.19gb in the os.