Can an HDD cause response time hiccups?

[CodeMonkey8]

I have been having some big problems with a PC I built back in 2008. It started by occasionally freezing up on me for 15-30 seconds. The mouse pointer won't move, the keyboard doesn't respond, but after a few seconds, things are back to normal.

Then it started freezing during bootup. I would have to power it down and power back up to get it to boot up, sometimes more than once.

Another weird wrinkle is that Windows Update says my video driver needs to be updated, but when I try to install it, it fails (more than once).

I have also gotten the Blue Screen of Death on one occasion, which makes me think my HDD is dying a slowly. But before I purchase a new one, I wanna be sure the freeze-ups don't point to something else - memory, CPU, graphics card?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[C1]

You might try "Safe Mode" to see if the problem exhibits.

You could also try running a program like the free "SeaTools" that boots from disk. You sort of can kill two birds with one stone in that you can check the HDD while attempting to see if the subject problem happens totally outside the OS.

BTW, this is one reason to have saved your old Windows 98/ME startup disks - to be able to do checking/testing independent (ie, totally outside) of Windows OS even including the HDD.

 

[smitbret]

I would do a SMART test and look for bad sectors and blocks. If any are found, then swap out the HDD and see if the issues remain.

If that comes out OK, I would start looking at a bad PSU. Random weird things, especially BSOD, will happen with a failing PSU. In fact, if the system was put together in 2008, you are nearing the unwritten 5 year rule for PSUs, although a good PSU will work a lot longer than that. If I were a betting man, a new PSU will fix your problem.

If that doesn't work, look at Memory if you can swap some out or test one stick at a time to see if any of them cause issues.

I had a Seagate that has been reporting bad sectors for about a year, but never seemed to have a problem until I lost a little data once. Did a full format on it and put it back in the systeam about 6 months ago. I was getting hangs and few weird glitched now and then but figured it was due to my PC being used as a server, too. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I stopped being able to access a partition on the HDD so I pulled it out and put it in an external enclosure. Within a day, I noticed all of the little annoyances had stopped and when I would turn the power on the external enclosure the system would get wacky. Tossed it.