Hard Drive Crashes

[Barbarian Roman]

Alright, I have an Acer Aspire 7745G laptop ( a piece of $#%@ by the way) with two hard drives, C and D. I install all my games on D, seeing I had a hard drive failure on C three months into the warranty and now want to tax C as little as possible, seeing Windows is installed on there and I would be f***ed if C crashes with all my files. Now, after the warranty is over, C is running well, but just two days ago, when I game, multiple games keep crashing, like homefront, Black Ops, etc. On my speakers a buzzing noise sounds for a few seconds and the games freeze, then I get a CTD. When I go into my computer, hard drive D is no longer visible until I completely shut down the computer and then turn it on again. Then Hard Drive D works OK for about half an hour into gaming, then crashes again. Keeps repeating over and over again. Does this mean hard drive D is on it's last legs? Or maybe there's some drivers I need to update? I reinstalled the intel AHCI drivers of Acer's website, but no to no avail.
My specs:
Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium
Acer Aspire 7745G
8 gb ram
ATI radeon 5650m
i5 460m @2.53 Ghz

 

[TVeblen]

Check this setting:

• Go to Control Panel > Hardware & Sound > Power Options >
• Whichever plan you are on > click "Change Plan Settings"
• Click on "Change Advanced Power Settings"
• Expand "Hard Disk" > expand "Turn Hard Disk Off After" > and make sure the setting is "Never".

 

[DeaconFrost]

Regardless of what the issue is, this would be a great time to get an external drive and back up your files.

 

[1Bowtie]

I agree with Deacon's post about backup, then the buzz in the game is a corrupt sound file which is locking up the game. Suggestion is out the video drivers and sound drivers, then install the video drivers first and then the sound drivers as your video card also manipulates sound in games.

 

[Barbarian Roman]

You gave me an idea. The sound driver might actually be the problem. Actually, while I'm on the internet it does do this too, like when I'm watching something on youtube. Makes a real long buzzing noise and freezes for about 30 seconds then returns to normal. As well, sound keeps switching from speakers to digital output alot, and I have to restart the computer to get sound from the speakers again. Problem is, I HAVE tried updating the sound drivers. I have a realtek HD sound card, tried downloading the latest drivers, but after it shows a message that no speakers or headphones are detected. When I go to roll back the driver, no speakers or headphones are detected as well. When I try installing the old drivers after removing everything, it won't work either. Only way to go back to old drivers that will work is through system restore.
And yes, files are backed up.

 

[TH2]

Sound Card audio driver

This problem sounds very annoying.
Try uninstalling the audio device, reboot and let windows install the device again. See if the Windows drivers have any better response. (It shouldn't) If not, redownload the latest drivers from the manufacturer.
----------------------
If the drivers are located on a bad sector on the drive, it could be having a hard time reading the driver. Try running a chkdsk /f /r on the drive with the audio driver.

 

[Barbarian Roman]

Well, i have gone into device manager and completely uninstalled everything. So when i reboot, windows reinstalls the default sound drivers, but no sound. So, I install the realtek driver, tried the original one and the newest one, still no go. I used to have no problem doing this a few months back, before I had to reinstall to factory settings. I don't know, perhaps a reinstall of windows or factory settings may be required, which I just did in January thanks to corrupt ACHI drivers, I've had about 4 major issues with this laptop in the 16 months I have owned it. It is annoying when I have to keep transferring GB of data to another computer all the time, as I'm too cheap to get an external hard drive. Never again Acer I have an old compaq desktop that was pretty low end when i bought it 6 years ago, and it still runs decently, never had ANY major problems with it. They don't make things like the used to. I miss XP, didn't look as fancy as Windows 7, but had far less BS problems.

 

[Barbarian Roman]

This problem sounds very annoying.
Try uninstalling the audio device, reboot and let windows install the device again. See if the Windows drivers have any better response. (It shouldn't) If not, redownload the latest drivers from the manufacturer.
----------------------
If the drivers are located on a bad sector on the drive, it could be having a hard time reading the driver. Try running a chkdsk /f /r on the drive with the audio driver.

I will try running the index check and see how it works out.

 

[TH2]

Game Audio Settings

Have you tried dialing down the audio settings on your game? Maybe a lower setting would take some stress off the audio device and prevent it from hanging up.

Something that might save you from going through the headache of rebuilding the system and resolve the problem might be to purchase an inexpensive audio card.

 

[karlsnooks]

Barbarian Roman,

Did you make a full system image backup? Yes or No.