I knocked my husband’s laptop off the sofa, and now it runs extremely slow. Normally, I would think it was a software glitch, but it seems an odd coincidence that the laptop drop and the error happen at the same time. The laptop itself is a two year old Dell Inspiron, and it is running Windows XP SP2 with Zone Alarm Security Suite.
Even in safe mode, the computer takes several more minutes to load than normal. There is no real “error” that I get; it simply takes forever, and nothing can get done. In task manager, it only shows 2% of the CPU being used at its slowest points.
The RAM is firmly inserted in the laptop, and the hard drive sounds normal. My first inclination is to rebuild the hard drive; are there any other possible solutions that I may be overlooking?