Computer Acting Up - Random Disk Check

[latches]

Hey guys,

My computer has been acting funny. I just moved and brought my computer to my new house and all of a sudden is behaving odd. I packed it in its original box and used the same foam and padding to transport it so I dont think it got bumped hard or anything but here is what happened yesterday:

I was in the process of reconnecting my internet when suddenly the computer wouldnt respond after being restarted. It simply wouldnt boot to desktop. It just hung with a cursor and black screen. Instead of clicking the restart button as I usually do I just switched off the power supply since it tends to not mess with the bios.

After that seeming reset it boots up into a random HDD Disk Check that I never told it to do. It does its thing and finds an issue or two and then boots fine into the desktop.

It seemed alright but would hang in different places like when being put to sleep or right after entering in my password while booting - it would take a long time just sitting on the welcome screen or the spinning thing would freeze for a few seconds before booting to desktop. To remedy the situation I undid some services and undid a few start up programs and then powered down, switched off the PSU, and purged the electricity by pressing the power button. I also defragged and cleaned the registry and scanned for spyware and scanned with "sfc /scannow".

Since then its been working fine with some hanging here and there but I want to be sure Im not missing something. Could the hard drive be having problems? And do I need to have my Microsoft Intellipoint and Intellitype load on startup? I dont even use the programmable buttons really. Let me know.

Apologies for the long post. Thanks

 

[mfenn]

Sounds to me like the drive is going bad. Random long pauses when performing certain operations usually means that the HDD is having to retry a bunch of times to read a certain sector. Uninstalling and reinstalling the troublesome apps will probably make the symptoms go away at least temporarily because the files will get put onto different sectors. However, I wouldn't trust this disk for any longer than I had to, you should buy a replacement drive right away.

 

[jjsbasmt]

mfenn is correct on the possibility of the HD going bad. I have always been a big fan of HD Tune which can be found on the Betanews website under File Forum. I would install and run this and scan the HD for bad sectors. Run a full scan not a "quick scan" as that won't find bad sectors. Also you should find out the brand of the HD and download the drive diagnostics from the manufactuer and run those. Not knowing the age of your system or HD it is possbile that the drive is still under warranty either by the drive manufactuer or the system builder if it's not home built. Back up very soon is warranted.

 

[latches]

My computer is custom built. I got the HD new from a friend who had come across some. The brand is Western Digital and capacity is 640GB. Its running in AHCI mode.

Id also like to add that when the computer is turning on - and much of time during normal use - the HD Light on my case is solid lit. Theres hardly any flashing. Is that another bad sign?

 

[mfenn]

Well, when the computer is booting, you'd expect the HDD light to be pretty much constantly lit. If the light is lit during the freezes, then yes that is a bad sign.

 

[latches]

Alright, I was wrong about the light. I mistook it for my power light. lol...my bad. Anyway, I used both the WD tools and HD Tune and both found no problems at all. The computer has also been fine for a good while now. Im going to keep my eyes out for an SSD anyway and thankfully the HD is still in warranty so I think Im in safer waters. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Puppies04]

At no point do you mention checking the SATA connection to the HDD/mobo. Have you done this?

Also this...

powered down, switched off the PSU, and purged the electricity by pressing the power button.

did very little unless you removed the CMOS battery from the board, did you?

 

[latches]

I did check that Puppies04 but Ill check again. Like I said - its been behaving for the past week or so, so far. And about the purge - I had a computer once that would post but would black screen and refuse to boot at all. I did that and all was well. It works in certain situations as far as Ive experienced. I dont mean to reset me settings or restore my bios. The point is to kind of start the computer fresh every now and then.

 

[mfenn]

I did check that Puppies04 but Ill check again. Like I said - its been behaving for the past week or so, so far. And about the purge - I had a computer once that would post but would black screen and refuse to boot at all. I did that and all was well. It works in certain situations as far as Ive experienced. I dont mean to reset me settings or restore my bios. The point is to kind of start the computer fresh every now and then.

That makes sense to me. If you drain all the capacitors in the board, you'll reset the vast majority of the internal circuitry. The battery basically serves only to keep the CMOS memory powered, it can't output enough current to do much else.