Possible HDD problem

[2336]

Folks,
I've been working on a friend's computer and beating my head against a wall. The rig is a Gateway Essential with a Celeron 433, 10.2GB HDD and 192MB of RAM. She's running Win98SE and has installed Norton SystemWorks 2003. Whenever I run Speed disk it stops at 34% and restarts over and over again. If I run Defrag it won't go beyind 1% before it restarts and keeps restarting. I've shut down all non-essential programs and it still does the same thing. The HDD is a Fujitsu and since I don't have any Fujitsu-specific software to diagnose and/or trouble-Shoot. I'm starting to think that this is a hardware problem and the HDD might possibly be on the way out. If anyone has any input or can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Rick

 

[Mavtech]

I've had to unplug the network cable or disable the connection before to have defrag work right. I would also suggest a system upgrade for your friend. Celeron 433? Ugh! hahaha

 

[T3C]

ghost the drive to a spare HD, then run the defrag and all that crap. If it all goes ok, you HD is shot, if not then you need to look somewhere else. Run a virus scan on the thing first housecall.antivirus.com .

 

[tdowning]

You could also run speed disk or Windows Defrag from "Safe mode"

One other thing I would suggest is using a win98 Boot floppy to run scan disk in DOS

watch carefully, If the progress ever sputters several times or once for more than 10-15 seconds, then the HDD should be backed up and replaced.

 

[Prong]

Is the task scheduler running? When I was running 98, Speed disk would hang on me with TS running.

 

[redbeard1]

How long have you let it run? A friend had to let one of his systems run over a day to get through one spot and finish the defrag. Is there any screensaver or power save features on? I've seen them stop a defrag. If you really want to use speed disk in normal mode, use ctrl-alt-del to end any extra programs that are running in the list, including any anti virus program.

The safe mode defrag suggestion works 95% of the time to get through problem drives. Though I had one at work that I had to leave run over night to finish.

 

[SwampsterFL]

If your HDD is extremely fragmented, or beyond 80% full (or both) then you will have a hard time getting it to defrag.

Using Crtl+Alt+Del, stop everything but Exlorer and Speed Disk. Click on Options in Speed Disk and select Defrag Only. This will cause it to skip the optimization process and will give you a much better chance of success. Once you have it defragged, then you can go back and turn optimization back on and do it over again and it will succees.