Does this sound like a bad hard drive ?

[Mrwurm]

My computer has been acting strange lately. I use a firewall, anti-virus, spyware tools, and Geek Superhero so I'm fairly certain that its not a malicious program. Here's what's happening:
1) System cannot find some programs when I click their icon.
2) Some files have become corrupt
3) Several programs are asking for registration information. They think they were just installed. Example, Microsoft Office tools welcomed me as a new user and wants registration info.
4) Programs such as 'Word' launch very slowly and then load small documents slowly.
5) Some programs are asking for unlock codes that were used when the programs were installed two years ago.
6) Computer locks up about once per day and the red light for the hard drive will stay lit when its locked up.

Here is the specs:
Pentium 4 (2.4 ghz)
512 mb ram
40 gb hard drive (21 gb available)
Windows 2000 Professional

Do you think this is a hard drive problem ?

 

[Hakim]

Jerry,

Open a dos window and run this command:
(start /run "cmd")

chkdsk c: /f

That will check for and fix and hard drive errors.

In order for it to run, it will need to "lock" access to the drive. If it cannot do so, it will ask if you want to run it next time at start up. Say yes. Reboot. It will take some time, possibly up to a half hour. But you should be able to discover if there are failures on the hard drive.

If you want to just have a diagnostic done, run : chkdsk c: It will check it but not fix errors.

If all of the CHKDSK passes, you probably have a corrupted operating system or registry.

In my experience, if you have a corrupted OS, you usually have to reinstall it and all of your programs. Ugh. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

There is another program called JV 16 PowerTools. It has saved me a few times from registry problems. But is is a bit of a techy tool.

 

[Nasty135]

Jerry, Also sometimes more often than not , In my experience when a Hard drive is about to go they can start making more or funny noises (clicking )when there have been no request made (idle condition) ...

Also sometimes even-though you haven't invited anything in on purpose you could be a victim of an e-mail bomb or trojan of somekind.

Do you have Adaware, Spybot S&D , or AVG? These seem to be good for finding and Quarentining or even deleting some troubles... Don't know if your real familiar with Reg cleaners or not but if you are they will help you clean out some junk that is a constant issue: " But you better know what you are looking for" before attempting this or you could be doing an Fdisk & format:C
Good Hunting...

 

[orangebluegreen]

I had one of my 120Gig IBM’s fail couple years back with similar symptoms, would sit there and light would come on and nothing. Trying to run defrag it would hang up and do nothing but work forever, or it would reboot the computer. It never asked for codes however.


This program from Hitachi is easy to use. It’s very good on IBM/Hitachi but they claim it does simple tests on other drives also.


Drive Fitness Test (v4.06)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

 

[anojones]

Could be the harddrive- but I agree with the above poster that they will often start making new noises before they fail. It does sound like it's time to re-format and re-install Windows (make sure you back up all your files first). Windows2K is probably the most stable version of windows, but even it will need a re-install once in awhile.

 

[Mrwurm]

Well, I took the computer back to the private shop that built it. The tech opened it up and said, "oh ya, probably a bad mother board" "we've seen alot of these particular boards go bad." He's gonna do some testing and let me know tomorrow.

 

[orangebluegreen]

I did that too. They supposedly ran a test on the system for 24 hours and said it was fine. Get it back and a couple days later it starts acting up again.

Long story short....it got worse and then eventually the diagnostic did show a code that was terminal, HD was replaced free by IBM. Computers are weird though, many of the same symptoms for differing probs, good luck.

 

[flwiii]

Your problems may or may not be the hard drive. It could be the motherboard, or the RAM onboard. Ocassionally a bad stick of RAM can produce some pretty weird responses from the CPU.

I use a program (fairly expensive -- $100.00) called SpinRite from GRC (Gibson Research Corporation -- www.grc.com). It is absolutely the best utility I have ever used to verify the functionality of a Hard Drive. I have even brought back drives from near death to a point where I could pull most of the data from it and onto another drive. I run SpinRite on all my drives once a month to keep them running at their best.

Another utility that I use and I don't remember the price is HOTPC Pro. This utility tests motherboards, memory, CPU, etc.

Frank

 

[Mrwurm]

The mother board was the problem. Had it replaced for $89 and all is well.

 

[flwiii]

Very good. Glad to hear all is well again.