Constant Freezing/weird stuff with Computer

This sounds like a hard disk problem. First, are you able to get anything Windows related to start? Can you get to the Advanced Boot Options menu? If so, select Repair Your Computer.

Then, use the System Recovery Options to choose Command Prompt.

Do the following:

chkdsk /r c:
chkdsk /r d:
chkdsk /r e:
chkdsk /r f:

.etc until you get the message that the volume could not be opened for direct access. For any drives that do not give the message:
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems
run chkdsk again as above. In other words, if it says:
Windows has made corrections to the file system
after running the disk check, run the disk check again.

I realize you may only have one disk show up in Windows explorer, but you may have more than one disk through recovery options. This is because the system creates a hidden boot partition (which will be C: in recovery), you may have a recovery partition for your PC that is hidden (which will be D: in recovery), and you will have your primary Windows partition (which may be E: in recovery). A custom PC will likely have at least C: and D: to scan.


I would also suggest running the short and long tests with SeaTools for DOS.

Oh gosh thank you so much! I'm so happy right now, I'm typing this on my laptop rather than an extremely cramped apple touch screen-thing!

I only got the chance to run my d: scan 3 times after my dad impatiently told me to stop doing that. However, I did get through c: and d:. Thank you so much! I'll try and figure out the seatools soon.

My computer is working all fine and dandy again! It stopped freezing every five seconds, too. I'm going to wait a couple days before seeing if it crashes again.

You're welcome. Glad to see you are able to run Windows again. :)

So my computer just recently slowed down, crashed, and is now "checking disks for consistency". How marvelous.

Was it a hard crash or a blue screen crash? By hard crash, I mean: Did it just turn itself off?

It just turned itself off

It just ran through the chkdsk: and has been stuck at "starting windows" for the past half hour

Were you ever able to run SeaTools for DOS? I highly suspect a hard disk problem at fault here...

I'm ashamed To say I didn't... I got lazy and distracted (gosh I regret that!)

Also, this may sound dumb, but what is a hard drive problem?

I use the term "problem" rather generally, so it is not a dumb question. It could mean something as simple as data corruption (somewhere in the process of moving data, the hard drive failed or the system was shut down unexpectedly, and the data was not moved as expected leaving fragments of it in different sectors of the hard disk rather than in the sectors expected). It could also mean you actually have bad sectors: A hard disk has physical sectors where it stores the data, and those can be physically damaged.

Damaged sectors are designed for and extra sectors are added to the disk to ensure the drive can re-allocate the file system to the undamaged sectors. However, if there are too many bad sectors, the drive runs out of extra sectors to map to, and the drive is said to fail because it eventually will have nowhere to store data as more bad sectors accumulate. Bad sectors generally accumulate only if the head of the disk malfunctions or is damaged by say a drop to a concrete floor while the drive is running. The head of the disk then clobbers sectors as it moves and creates more bad sectors until the drive fails.

Another hard disk problem is a bad cable connecting the hard disk to the motherboard. This is less common, but does happen from time to time. The motherboard is not able to send the data to the hard disk or read the data from the hard disk, and the system throws errors that may indicate a bad hard disk when the disk is actually fine.

A fourth hard disk problem is a controller driver is corrupted. Controller drivers allow Windows to interface with the drive. If they become corrupt, any of the above three issues may be blamed when the system throws errors.

Additional hard disk problems can include viruses since viruses reside in the hard disk data and can act with malicious behavior on the drive. Problems can also include memory/RAM corruption since data is often written to and read from the RAM modules.


Hopefully you are not sorry you asked what I meant by a hard drive problem.