I came back home after being abroad for about 6-7 months and found my PC just sitting there. I left it on for a few hours to install updates, but now it's super sluggish because of 100% disk usage, mainly from the Windows install module worker. I tried resetting the PC, but it just gets stuck on the "getting Windows ready" screen for hours and then fails to reset. The troubleshooter for Windows updates isn't helping, and the system file checker halts at 24%. The hard drive is pretty old, from around 2016, and I suspect it might need replacing. The read speeds are around 20 MB/s. Can anyone confirm if the hard drive is definitely the problem?
1 Answer
Sounds like your drive is probably failing. You might want to consider replacing it with a cheap SSD—often under $40. You can download a fresh version of Windows from Microsoft's site on another machine and install it on the new SSD. If you need to salvage files from the old drive, think about getting a drive enclosure.
I can't do much right now since I'm here temporarily, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future.