Linux Mint Forums

I have a problem with my LMDE system that has me completely stumped. It . . . . . . pauses. It generally takes forever to launch a new program, even simple programs such as a Nautilus file manager window or terminal. Any new program/window will take anywhere from 30-60 seconds to launch, sometimes longer, even if there is nothing else running. Similar delays occur with text-entry screens, such as typing a Google search or Facebook login - I can start typing in the search box, but no text will show up for 30seconds or more. Closing windows - same thing. Click on the "x" and nothing happens for 30-60 seconds. This is starting from a clean reboot, no other programs running. System monitor shows minimal CPU and Memory usage while this annoying behaviour is occurring, which suggests that the problem is not from too much competing usage.

I'm running LMDE, using the "latest" repos, with a couple of apps installed from Debian Testing (Wheezy), trying to keep a stable desktop. My system is an AMD A8-3850 quad core 2.9Ghz system with 8Gb RAM, so this problem has nothing to do with system power or resources. I'm thinking it *might* have to do with the graphics drivers, but they have worked just fine for the past couple of months and haven't been updated, so doubtful about that too.

What could cause these strange "pauses" or "lags" in usability??

Still trying to fix this; I've determined it wasn't Gnome, as the exact same issue happens if I use KDE.
I thought it might be due to faulty RAM, but the machine runs perfectly well from a live CD (which is what we've been doing for the past couple of days)
I thought it might be a network issue (as some web pages take ages to load; for example, it took over 1 minute, with no other programs running, to load the forums.linuxmint.com page this morning), but again never any issues when running from the live CD.
I thought it might be a hard drive issue. I tried to run the SMART tests from the live CD. The only indicator of a potential problem was that neither the short nor long test would finish, but rather would get stuck somewhere around 90%. They also did not report any errors. It also seems unlikely that a hard drive issue would cause such delays on loading a web page when there is no hard drive access happening. The failure of the SMART test to finish,however, is about the only clue I've got so far that the hard drive might be the cause of the problem.

Any more thoughts on how to troubleshoot the problem? In my experience, this kind of behaviour that has no obvious cause is almost invariably hardware related, but I'm stumped as to how to pin it down.

Thanks, B.

Initially I thought maybe you were running from a slow USB flash stick or something.

Like you I agree that it sounds like a HDD issue at this stage. It sounds suspiciously like an HDD that is developing some initial problems. Remember to back up your data!

Also, a HDD problem is not necessarily caused by the HDD but can be caused by bad HDD controller, power supply, power surges, even from the software side of things the drivers for your chipset or controller. Even memory issues. Troubleshooting a HDD problem can be maddening because if you swap the HDD and still have problems, you've wasted money and are no closer to solving the problem.

Test out other OS and distros to see if you notice similar behaviour. After you've backed up your data of course.