Freezing then turning off

[Mishto]

So to provide some backstory (in case it might be relevant), a few weeks ago my hard drive crashed. I had a friend get it fixed, recover the data, etc. I also upgraded to Windows 7. It had been working fine for about a week, up until yesterday. I had World of Warcraft open and I alt tabbed to Google Chrome (like I often do) and after a minute or two, my whole system froze for a few seconds before turning off (I couldn't ctrl+alt+del or anything). I rebooted it, and it crashed at the Windows log-in screen after I entered my password. I rebooted it in safe mode, turned off some extraneous start-up programs, and restarted it normally. It worked fine, I had WoW open, then I opened Google Chrome and sure enough, it froze then crashed again. Restarted it, and it crashed on the Windows log-in screen before I could even input my password. Any ideas?

 

[torrentg]

Hi. Clean install.

 

[Xzaviar]

Your friend fixed your hard drive?

You said that your hd crashed and your friend recovered your data and fixed the drive?

Did he low level format? Sometimes when a hard drive fails and the error spots are "repaired" they can come back to haunt you in future use.

I'd try a low level format set to run continuosly at least overnight.

Then as torrentg said, do a clean install. If you get the same problem within a month or so, save yourself headache and potential heartache and buy a new drive.

 

[Mishto]

I don't know exactly what he did but he took my drive, sent it to Seagate and apparently they recovered the data that was on it. What does low level format mean? Sorry, I'm not so savvy.

 

[Xzaviar]

Low Level Format

Low level format is a process by which a software utility writes your entire drive with 1's and 0's.

How much did this cost. To send the drive to the manufacturer for data retrival would cost, minimumally a few hundred dollars!

If this did happen and Seagate reconditioned the drive you should be ok to just do a clean install.

If the install wasn't a fresh install already and you had been using it for months without any problems I'd probably try looking repairing the underlying software issue causing this. Being such a new install your likely better off doing the fresh install and insuring that you have all the latest drivers for your hardware, including your BIOS.