So my sister called me a few weeks ago, told me the computer was being "sluggish" "slow" etc...
My sis isn't terribly technologically inclined. She got the system around Christmas of this past year from Dell. I had her clean up a few things, run a few spyware utilities, made sure her AV was up to date (anti-vir), a few other routine things.
Fast forward to yesterday, now the system won't fully load into Windows, sometimes won't even start loading, just goes black after the Dell logo comes up.
So I head down, take a look at things. Try the Vista startup repair - no dice, no better/worse. Try a restore point - no go either. Since she never backs anything up (I've even made video tutorials for her to backup her photos :/) I brought the system home with me to try and grab what I can, thinking I'd just go ahead and reinstall.
I didn't think it was hardware related at all, but once I put her HD in my system, everything went goofy. Five minutes to load on the first bootup with the drive installed. I'd open a few directories and it would either hang/blue screen/let me copy a few things before crashing/hanging. I managed to grab her documents folders as well as all of her pictures (work related).
I've been trying to look to see if there was anything else I missed but I've been crashing/hanging/getting rebooted when trying to browse the drive.
I guess I'm just wondering, does this sound like the drive is dying? I've actually never had a drive die on me in 15+ years using PC's (lucky I guess). The drive sounds perfectly normal, not quite sure what else to say.
I've disconnected it for now and burned her data to a couple DVD's. All of the data seems to be intact.
Since I've gotten all of the important stuff, where do I go from here - any utilities I can test the drive with? Should I just do a clean install on her system?
It's a Seagate 250gb sata drive, her system is an x2 4000, 1gb ram, dvd drive, onboard vid - basic dell system.
TIA, sorry for the disjointed/rambling post - it's early here now =)
My sis isn't terribly technologically inclined. She got the system around Christmas of this past year from Dell. I had her clean up a few things, run a few spyware utilities, made sure her AV was up to date (anti-vir), a few other routine things.
Fast forward to yesterday, now the system won't fully load into Windows, sometimes won't even start loading, just goes black after the Dell logo comes up.
So I head down, take a look at things. Try the Vista startup repair - no dice, no better/worse. Try a restore point - no go either. Since she never backs anything up (I've even made video tutorials for her to backup her photos :/) I brought the system home with me to try and grab what I can, thinking I'd just go ahead and reinstall.
I didn't think it was hardware related at all, but once I put her HD in my system, everything went goofy. Five minutes to load on the first bootup with the drive installed. I'd open a few directories and it would either hang/blue screen/let me copy a few things before crashing/hanging. I managed to grab her documents folders as well as all of her pictures (work related).
I've been trying to look to see if there was anything else I missed but I've been crashing/hanging/getting rebooted when trying to browse the drive.
I guess I'm just wondering, does this sound like the drive is dying? I've actually never had a drive die on me in 15+ years using PC's (lucky I guess). The drive sounds perfectly normal, not quite sure what else to say.
I've disconnected it for now and burned her data to a couple DVD's. All of the data seems to be intact.
Since I've gotten all of the important stuff, where do I go from here - any utilities I can test the drive with? Should I just do a clean install on her system?
It's a Seagate 250gb sata drive, her system is an x2 4000, 1gb ram, dvd drive, onboard vid - basic dell system.
TIA, sorry for the disjointed/rambling post - it's early here now =)
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