[ubuntu-uk] Churning hard disk, glacial startup

[Rob Beard]

Paul Webster wrote:
> Hi (again)! I'm a relative newcomer to Ubuntu, a refugee from the 
> Windows Wonderland, and I like it very much. However, lately the hard 
> disk churns and churns, almost all the time, and startup is very slow. 
> Even writing this email has taken a long time, because sometimes 
> everything else comes to a halt.
>
> Please, somebody, help!
>
> Paul
When you say it's churning, do you mean the disk is constantly running?

Is the drive making any clicking/knocking/whirring noises?

It may be possible that the drive is on the way out.  Open up a terminal 
and run the command dmesg

Have a look and see if it mentions any errors, it may be an error like 
disk read error or something like that.  Or it could be as suggested 
something using all the resources.

Rob