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#141
I think I've encountered a bad sign. The diagnostic extended test is stuck on a particular sector, and has been for a solid 20 minutes now.
The evidence is piling up that my HD is failing.
I think I've encountered a bad sign. The diagnostic extended test is stuck on a particular sector, and has been for a solid 20 minutes now.
The evidence is piling up that my HD is failing.
They're not that expensive. Just match the specs, slide out the old one and slide in the new one.
I'm not confident that I'd do it correctly though. Have you ever heard of the freezer trick? You put your hard drive in a sealed plastic bag and leave it in the freezer for a while, and sometimes it works magic on your hard drive. Maybe I should try that. lol
Also, any ideas on how the lifeguard scan works? Is it just going to hang on a bad sector forever? Or will it eventually do something?
I might as well try malwarebytes while I'm at it if the HD scan won't work.
@gregrocker
Your post #25 early on in this thread is fantastic. A great resource with lots of great tools and techniques. I've bookmarked as a page to come back to in the future. Thanks for taking the time to put that all together.
@Jim15
IMHO this has all the characteristics of a failing hard drive as your testing seems to be finding out. Long boot times, random programs not working, windows not booting, all point that way. If you ever got the system to reboot you could go into Event Viewer and under the Windows System logs check for disk errors. I suspect you'll see a bunch of them.
Yep, the diagnostic test just confirmed it for me. It was hanging due to a bad sector, which it offered to repair, but when it attempted to do so it gave me an error.
It now occurs to me why this may have happened as well. It wasn't too long ago, about three weeks back, but while packing away my lap top in a car, I accidentally dropped it and it banged against the car itself. My dad looks at me and says, "That can't be good.". I reassured him that a small accident like that would never mess it up. Fast forward one week later, and that's when my troubles began.
And that's what we call epic foreshadowing.
At any rate, thank you once again Greg. Even though my problems haven't ended, if it weren't for you helping me out, I would have reinstalled Windows and the problem would have eventually resurfaced. I've also learned a lot of things: the horror of bloatware, ways to troubleshoot a computer with booting issues, and I've got a few new programs that will optimize my computer... when I get a new hard drive.
Don't be surprised to see a new thread somewhere around here about how to replace a hard drive and which to choose!
Alright Greg, I'm bumping the thread like you requested.
I formatted the main partition like you suggested, and the reinstall is currently moving at a slow pace. It's at 7% on "Expanding Windows"
I'll update on what happens when it's done, or in the worst case scenario, if it doesn't work.
We need to continue here in thread instead of PM's so others can offer their help, too.
It's good news that HD will function as it could mean you are getting false positives with the Windows HD diagnostics. You still need to run booted CD diagnostics to be certain but if it installs then it's a good sign although the HD must remain suspect until cleared.
Run Disk Check from windows 7 asap after install.
Remember the steps to get a perfect install in my signature Pic below:
This is a very informative and interesting thread.
I'm subscribed to it !
The reinstall went well. It started up perfectly fine and is moving lightning quick to my surprise.
It wouldn't let me do the disk check while I was running windows so I shceduled one, restarted, and it's running now.
So far, so good. The check is moving quickly as well. I have to go out and do something though, will update back in 15 minutes or so if the check is finished.
I'm thinking that your issue was due to some very nasty malware.
I'm interested to see if once you're confident everything is working well, if you will do a new Malwarebytes scan and I am concerned about root kits here possibly. Maybe run the GMER scan, get it directly from www.gmer.net.
I'm still wondering if a partition may be infected. Possible?
Anyone else think looking for rootkits is a good idea?