My computer is dying???

[lckystr81]

OK, I think my Hard Drive is starting to go out but I wanted to check with someone else first to see if I'm right or not and if there's anyway to get my information off there before it completely quits. Here's what happens:

Everytime I turn my computer on I hear this grinding noise. When the windows screen comes up to start loading the loading bar that normally moves is jumpy and sometimes freezes up. If the computer doesn't freeze up windows will load and then the computer freezes up after it's done loading. The longest I've gotten the computer to work without freezing up is about 5 minutes.

P.S. I would really like to get this problem figured out so I don't have to use my sister's PC any more.

[LunaticTheory]

If you have another hard drive or when you buy your new HD or know of someone that has one you can try. Put it in as the master drive and slave the other one to it. Then load windows on the new on and boot from the HD and try to do a disc to disc transfer. I don't that this will work being that it freezes but it may be worth a shot.


Just one lunatics mindless rambling.

[PhoenixForce]

you can check if it's your hard drive with the diskcontrol tool,
it takes quite long so it might not be worth the trouble..

my pc makes a grinding noise as well when it starts up, but it's my fan that makes all the noise.

maybe your fan is broken & your processor isn't cooled down enough to keep up?

If you haven't tried yet, try formatting your pc rather than replacing it, ya never know ;)

greetz
PhoenixForce

[mathchamp]

Get a new PC! ;)

(Or just a new hard drive)

[PhoenixForce]

mathchamp are you willing to do a real life sell-off to me so I can buy a new one aswell? :D
I'll make it extra cheap! only 300 EUR/ 1k in stead of 30 mil :p

[zetetyc]

if you can see who makes your harddrive, the manufacturer may have a diagnostic program to check it out. a list of them can be found here. http://tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

you should also check the manufacturer's website, and consider calling tech support.

[Maikeru-]

does your computer makes a screechy sound?

[lckystr81]

It only makes a sound when it first starts up and it's more of a clunking grinding sound. No screechy sounds....at least none that I've noticed.

Edit: OK, I got my computer to start up without making the grinding noise. Everything seemed to be fine with it while I had it open. After it running for about 10 minutes it decided to lock up again and is back to not working.

The next morning:

Thanks for all the help everybody. I still can't get it running right but my friend is gonna take a look at it today. Hopefully he can figuure it all out. If not he said he's got an extra HD that I can have so my PC she be back up and running tonight. Thanks again!

[Kalki]

So did you sort it out now?

[lckystr81]

Nope, I have to wait until Friday now before he can work on it. So at the moment I'm trying a few of the things mentioned above to see if it will work.

[Sixix]

you can install the motherboard monitor http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ to have an eye on the temperaturs of your cpu, hdds etc. this way you can check if something is getting to hot :)
if you want to test your memory i would use http://www.memtest86.com/ but i hope your friend fixes everything today!

[lckystr81]

Can't really install anything on the computer now. It's so messed up that it locks up before it even gets to the Windows XP loading screen. So I'll just have to wait until he gets here to fix it today. Hopefully he can figure everything out for me.

[SpyBot-]

you could always try to remove some programs. Some games and certain programs may be freezing your comp. up. also make sure that you scan it with ad-aware and an antivirus.

[Vaekor]

you could always try to remove some programs. Some games and certain programs may be freezing your comp. up. also make sure that you scan it with ad-aware and an antivirus.

Except she has already said that she can't get it to boot at all, meaning that she can't access programs to delete them and can't scan it for viruses.

In short, I'm closing the thread. If the problem persists after your friend looks at it, make a new thread and we'll try again.

[Prince Forte]

Lucky you still have a computer, at least.

Running Windows 2000, my computer crashed recently and the entire contents of the system logical drive were completely wiped out.

Yeah; wasn't pretty. I saved some essentials from my personal logical drive, though. It just sucks that I had to have a 4 GB capacity physical drive in this shit thing. :mad:

I've got two 4 GB physical drives in here now, each with their own single logical drive, so compy behaves better now but still at the expense of most of my personal files. :(

For your sake I hope it gets fixed, and soon. If you want to take my advice, stop trying to boot it up. If your hard drive fails, it'll hurt. Bad.