Crazy mystery hardware failure

Ok I know I should just replace this drive and move on, but I don't have a lot of money to blow these days, and I just spent my extra money on some games/cds/dvds, so I'm looking to find a way to put off the inevitable for a while.

My computer seized up in the middle of using it. Just froze, wouldn't respond to anything. Turned it off and on again, and it just gave me blackness, which is not typical for a hard drive failure. However, when I unhooked the drive, I got some life, and I could see the BIOS start up screen.

Even better, when I hooked it back up again, I was able to boot back up, but it seized up again a few minutes after loading windows. Eventually I successfully booted safe mode and disabled virtual memory. Now I can use my computer, and I haven't had too much of an issue since.

So basically, I need a program that can quarantine the bad sectors. Like a thrid-party chkdsk utility. The Windows one won't work for some reason (just says "was unable to complete." This has been an issue for a long time, and is likely unrelated tot the hard drive failure). Any reccomendations?

IDE or SATA? If it's IDE I may have a spare you can have, I can check when I get home.

Also, did you run chkdsk through the Windows recovery mode or did you just try the ones in Windows?

It's IDE, and that would be mighty swell of you.

I'm not talking about the chkdsk from recovery mode. For some reason my computer doesn't do that any more. I just used the one under the tools tab when you right click on the drive.

Since I disabled virtual memory, I've still been getting the lock-ups but they only come every couple hours instead of every couple minutes. I've never had HD failures give me a black screen of death at boot up before, though. It's so weird. I hope there's not some other problem complicating it.

Do you not have a Windows XP CD? You should be able to boot from that into recovery, though there might be something else I don't know about.

It really makes me want to say power supply since a PC can still POST even without a hard drive attached at all, so a corrupted one shouldn't affect power-on. I almost want to say RAM, but I don't know enough to go anywhere with that. You could removing some of your RAM and booting with individual sticks to see if that helps, one might be corrupted or failing.

I've got an 80GB HD if you want it, PM with your info and I can send it out this weekend - as long as you promise not to recover my loli porn off it.

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Originally Posted by MechDeus

It really makes me want to say power supply since a PC can still POST even without a hard drive attached at all, so a corrupted one shouldn't affect power-on.

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This is what my instincts were telling me from the get-go, but the fact that unhooking the drive seems to be a part of getting it to load up again seems to tell me it's in some way related. Basically, when it freezes, if I turn the computer off and on again, I get blackness. But if I unhook the drive, it'll load the bios stuff. And then if I hook the drive back up after that, it'll boot up all the way, at least for a little while.

The fact that disabling virtual memory helped to ameliorate the problem as it did would seem to implicate the HD as well, though that could also be RAM-related.

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I almost want to say RAM, but I don't know enough to go anywhere with that. You could removing some of your RAM and booting with individual sticks to see if that helps, one might be corrupted or failing.

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I'm going to try this, because it seems like a definite possibility. I also have a memtest disc somewhere, which I'll run, once I find it. I hope this is the case, actually, because my RAM is under warranty and I can easily have it replaced.

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I've got an 80GB HD if you want it, PM with your info and I can send it out this weekend - as long as you promise not to recover my loli porn off it.

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'Preciate it. We'll see how things go with the memory tests, though, so maybe I can save you the trouble.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Basically, when it freezes, if I turn the computer off and on again, I get blackness. But if I unhook the drive, it'll load the bios stuff.

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Yeah, after I posted that I remembered a few weeks ago we couldn't get a PC to boot into Windows at all (this was a fresh, right-out-of-the-box machine) and the only way we could get anything was if we unhooked the hard drive. No clue why that occurs.

Something to try if you can: Unhook your hard drive and run Linux on a CD. If all goes smoothly then your issue seems pretty obvious.

Actually, I'm having pretty good luck with the memory thing. I took one stick out, and it locked up after like a half hour, so I switched it for the other one, and I haven't had any lock ups in like 4 hours or something. So I may have found the culprit.

No idea why it would have caused the apparent HD issue though. Maybe the freezing was causing the HD to seize somehow.

My guess would be the bad sector is getting accessed when the HD starts writing to the RAM, but since the BIOS has its own storage there's no effect since there's nothing being written (and I believe by changing your virtual memory settings that also changed how and where files were being stored and thus altering your crash time). There's a good chance you'd get the same problems if you used a Linux CD since that would obviously be writing to the RAM.

Somewhere on this board in one of the other PC issue threads there's a link for a prime number program that will stress your RAM, you might want to grab that and run it for a while to make sure it'll hold up.

[edit] Here we go.

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Originally Posted by Burky

[...] go to options/torture test/large ffts.
That tests only your ram.

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I jinxed myself. The system seized up again. So it might not have been the RAM, or it might be both my sticks of RAM are bad (since the one did last a lot longer).

I noticed while poking around in the BIOS options I had disabled the CPU shut down temp, apparently. I'm hoping I didn't fuck up my CPU or something. I haven't noticed this problem corresponding to high temperatures or heavy CPU load, but it's got me worried all the same.

I totally read the thread title as Some minor Hard Dick issues causing major problems.


Just saying.