I've got what I strongly suspect of being a dead hard drive but I want to be absolutely sure before I charge for a hard drive replacement and Windows reinstall.
In short: Is there anything, other than a corrupted hard drive, that causes the system to lock up with the hard drive light on permanently part way through just loading programs as normal?
Doesn't seem to effect things in safe mode, meaning the corrupt sectors are probably in some service or commonly used program. Can sometimes go for quite a while without locking up but leaving it on long enough eventually triggers the lockup.
Could be other things like ram. In safe mode a lot of drivers are not loaded like the proper video driver, meaning there is less stuff loaded in the memory to go wrong. If I was you I would test other components on the computer before buying another Hard drive. But it could be a bad hard drive just as well.
I'll run Memtestx86 but I'm pretty sure that bad ram wouldn't cause the hard drive light to stay on permanently.
Are you hearing any of the common physical signs of a dead HDD? Repeated clicking, etc? I'm thinking your original diagnosis of bad sectors is probably spot-on and memtest isn't going to find squat. Any chance you've got another box you can hook the drive up to and run a chkdsk/fsck on it?
Clicking is on an actually dead hard drive, right? Anyone know a way to check a Vista NTFS (Which is apparently different from XP NTFS.) partition from a livecd or similar. I don't want to get to opening things up just yet.
The clicking typically means that the heads are searching for the tracks on the platter but not able to find them, or trying to read the same sectors over and over with no luck. Usually when the drive starts doing that it's time to stick a fork in it, because it's done. If it's able to boot and then hangs hard then I'd say it's probably got bad sectors and hasn't hit death-click mode yet. If I had a drive that was going suspect usually I'd break out my copy of SpinRite (which, despite the annoying in-show ads on "Security Now!", really does work as advertised), hook the drive up to my recovery box, and let SR hammer on it for a while to see what it can fix. Nearest I can find is that fsck still can't fix NTFS drives, so you may have to try booting it into Windows and then running "chkdsk /R" on the drive, which will force a reboot and try to repair and recover any bad sectors. I'd also suggest hooking the drive up to a different Windows PC when doing this if possible instead of trying to do it from the suspect drive, but if you can't then you're going to have to take your chances and try to do it in-place.
I would be much more supportive of spin rite if it were free.
You'll note I didn't say he had to rush out and buy a copy of SpinRite. Not that I would ever advocate software piracy on a public forum.
You didn't, but I will. Spinrite has been an invaluable part of my toolbox for 4 years now. I use it, not only for data recovery, but for drive maintenance. The number of times it's saved my bacon has made it well worth the price.
You didn't, but I will. Spinrite has been an invaluable part of my toolbox for 4 years now. I use it, not only for data recovery, but for drive maintenance. The number of times it's saved my bacon has made it well worth the price.
You'll get no argument from me there. I'll admit that the first time I used it was with a bootleg copy. It was able to recover the drive and I was able to get the data off it. Following that I scraped up the $89 for the software and bought it, because in my mind the value of the data it recovered well exceeded that amount. But if you're the stereotypical starving college student or don't have that kind of money to throw down for a piece of recovery software, you have to do what you have to in order to get things done.
Alright, this laptop which had a corrupt hard drive is now often getting into reboot cycles before the loading bar has managed to go across once and I'm beginning to suspect it's the SATA controller or something on the motherboard. RAM checks out ok. Using a new hard drive, and while the problem is different from the one with the old hard drive, it might have the same cause.
My suspicion is either Vista, Vista drivers or a hardware problem with the SATA controller.
The reboot cycles come and go. When one comes, putting it into safe-mode loads as far as crcdisk.sys and then reboots. This seems to have happened to a few other people but I'm not pulling up any solutions.
Ok, so recently I switched to using dvi for my monitor so that I can use my Xbox over the vga. The only problem is that most of my steam games appear squished from 16:10 to 4:3 when put in fullscreen mode, and yes it is set to 16:10 in steam. I've also had this problem when trying to put an image in fullscreen so its not just steam's problem. I'm installing the newest driver now to see if that helps but other than that I don't know what the problem would be.
I think I fixed it. While it was squished in windows, if I set my monitor to "stretch" it stretched it back to the normal aspect ratio. I don't know why its like that since I never had that problem with DVI but anyway I think its fixed. Thanks anyway.
I've gimped my partitions and need some help. I need the 48.83 GB unallocated space added to the C: partition. How can I do this without destroying data on any of the partitions?
Lol. Windows has made it semi-difficult/mostly a pain in the ass to delete system32. (I was trying to fix msiexec.exe to get my printer to work, I did not try to delete my system32. So, with the partitions, am I screwed?
Firstly: Partitions on a disk must be sequential so you're going to have to move that Ext2 to the end, first, then resize the NTFS partition (I think that's why some people reccomend partitioning dual boot systems from alternate ends.). The GParted boot CD should be able to do that but it is going to take a day or two.
Could also be done from the Ubuntu boot disk but I'd go with GParted as there's less running to crash the system in that time, and boy do you not want to crash a repartitioning system.
It wasn't a joke. In the era of really cheap really big hard drives, and motherboards with a ton of SATA connectors, don't partition. Just get more drives. Any desktop should have at least two.
It wasn't a joke. In the era of really cheap really big hard drives, and motherboards with a ton of SATA connectors, don't partition. Just get more drives. Any desktop should have at least two.
I agree with scott. Drives are so cheap these days it's silly. Why spend the time and effort when you spend a little money and immediately solve the problem.
Even though Scott's idea is a bit far fetched, repartitioning is risky (Even if you back up, it'll take a while to get it restored.) and takes a while so if you were looking at new hard drives, now might be a good time.
One drive for the OS, one drive to store your data that isn't being stored in the cloud.
I have three drives in my computer. One is the OS, one is all my documents and such, and the third is just audio and video files. I can switch or upgrade OSes no problem. If they were all on the same drive, even on separate partitions, it would be a hassle. If I really wanted to go all out I would get a solid state drive for the OS. If I couldn't afford a big enough SSD, I would have another magnetic drive for the Program Files. If I had moneys to burn, I would get even more drives to make RAID or backup of the things I can't backup in the cloud.
Even a normal person with a computer can make a reasonable use out of just a few drives. Want to dual boot because a virtual machine won't cut it? Add a drive.
Even though Scott's idea is a bit far fetched, repartitioning is risky
Not with LVM.
I'm considering buying a few new hard drives and raiding it up. They're so cheap, and diskIO is actually the most significant performance bottleneck on my PC.
Comments
Anyone know a way to check a Vista NTFS (Which is apparently different from XP NTFS.) partition from a livecd or similar. I don't want to get to opening things up just yet.
My suspicion is either Vista, Vista drivers or a hardware problem with the SATA controller.
The reboot cycles come and go. When one comes, putting it into safe-mode loads as far as crcdisk.sys and then reboots. This seems to have happened to a few other people but I'm not pulling up any solutions.
I need the 48.83 GB unallocated space added to the C: partition. How can I do this without destroying data on any of the partitions?
Could also be done from the Ubuntu boot disk but I'd go with GParted as there's less running to crash the system in that time, and boy do you not want to crash a repartitioning system.
Also, back up everything first.
Even though Scott's idea is a bit far fetched, repartitioning is risky (Even if you back up, it'll take a while to get it restored.) and takes a while so if you were looking at new hard drives, now might be a good time.
I have three drives in my computer. One is the OS, one is all my documents and such, and the third is just audio and video files. I can switch or upgrade OSes no problem. If they were all on the same drive, even on separate partitions, it would be a hassle. If I really wanted to go all out I would get a solid state drive for the OS. If I couldn't afford a big enough SSD, I would have another magnetic drive for the Program Files. If I had moneys to burn, I would get even more drives to make RAID or backup of the things I can't backup in the cloud.
Even a normal person with a computer can make a reasonable use out of just a few drives. Want to dual boot because a virtual machine won't cut it? Add a drive.
I'm considering buying a few new hard drives and raiding it up. They're so cheap, and diskIO is actually the most significant performance bottleneck on my PC.