Crashed CD-R burn = HD screwed?

Bri

I'm struggling to even get to this page to ask for help. I was burning a giant wav and cue sheet file onto reliable CD-Rs via EAC (1st time on this laptop) when I realised it had been going for about an hour. It seemed to have got stuck on a particular track (I was using accurate mode) so I clicked cancel burn. 5 re-attempts later my clicking the cancel button (brought up new each time) seemed to work and I closed down EAC after a nice error about the audio stream or something. Thought nothing of it. Poor laptop was hot and the HD was working overtime so I closed it down.

When I say working overtime I mean locked a perpetual rhtyhm - a familiar one at that - where it sounds like it's slowly going along looking for a particular part. This has happened before the odd time but is always stoppable once you either close the troublesome program or restart.

Problem now is: Restart leads me to the login screen. 1st time ever that I hear the HD doing the same pattern of clicking BEFORE I even login. It took 7 mins to load the desktop and another 3 for firefox. TYping itself is grand. Only system utility that failed to load was my firewall. Help! I can't get it to stop now after 3 restarts (slowly waiting for it to shut down the proper way each time). I've reopened EAC and put the CD back in but nothing seems to give it what it wants. It's now going continually and doesn't exactly feel healthy.

What is this? I opened Task Manager and had 30 processes just after startup so I asked it to end svchost.exe as it had plenty of entries and kept using the CPU for a sec or so whilst everything else was at 0. That just made Windows XP Home shut down after a countdown.

As I type it's still going.

:eek:

Dr. Dre

It's normal to have several instances of svchost running, so that's OK. You say there was a countdown and then XP shut down? This sounds like the blaster worm, have you any antivirus installed? what service pack (if any) are you using?

Failing all that, it sounds as if your hard drive is failing.

Bri

svchost was just a random guess from me...and sure enough after the warning of instability for closing processes. That's when the countdown kicked in - it was a windows one AFAIK simply because of svchost. Well if not it was a serious coninsidence.

I'm using no SP yet - ironically I'm in the middle of clearing my HD to as to install SP2.

I was hoping you wouldn't say the HD was in trouble. So what do I do? It's a laptop so is it completely screwed? I've just bought a new external HD so I'm totally shafted if I've to buy a new one. Is using it to go online (painfully slow) bad for it? The fact it did this before but only for short times - good or bad thing? Why would it happen now when the laptop wasn't moved.

Any temp way to stop it continually spinning this way? Any HD program like defrag just can't get going when told to analyse, etc. I've just set hibernate and standby for as quick as possible in an effort to get the poor thing to relax!

Any advice seriously appreciated.

jozi

I think if you close svhost it automatically shuts down just like that blaster virus.

If you know the harddisk manufacture then go tho their site and look for a program that will analyse the disk for errors etc, maxtor use maxblast i think.

I'm sure there's someone out there who can answer your Q's a bit better than me as i'm not 100% sure on the above.

Jozi

Bri

Thanks for the input jozi. I'm looking into it at the moment and scanning the entire thing for virii just in case...

jozi

Yeah that would be a good plan alright, should have said that earlier.

Jozi

StRiKeR

yea the maxtor one is good, it works for all drives even works for sata even tho it doesn't say it supports it! i tried it, it works! it sounds like your HDD been over heated at some point and is failing on you, normally they should be fine if you spot that early enough and shut down the system to let it cool down, but its very unusual for a laptop HDD to over heat, I have my laptops on 24/7 for like 6 weeks with no problems, but HDD set to power off after 5mins idle! did you say that happened before you had problem with burning the CD? did you find out why it was doing that and what way do you have the power management setup in windows and how hard the HDD has to work when you use it? and how long? I'm asking all these questions coz I think the HDD problem is cause by over heating from long time spinning!

Dr. Dre

TBH Bri, if I was you and I was only getting around to installing a service pack now - I would do a fresh install. You have an external drive, so you can put any files you want to keep on that - if the poor little laptop holds up
If the HD is still struggling after that then you know it's on it's last legs.

Bri

Dr. Dre: That def. sounds like a good option. The Maxtor drive has tons of space and presumably will be fine holding all my precious files and then being reinstalled...ie I won't have to move it onto some1 elses's computer and then move it back?! I'm guessing not anyway seeing as it's external.

Striker: Unfortunately I'm guessing your totally right. The HD was burning a CD with EAC - which is generally longwinded enough without getting stuck. The screen was down on it and the keyboard was boiling when I came back to it (about 2 hrs later! when it was still spinning ). I have the battery removed so my power settings were probably pretty standard - but not at the quickest turnoff - just something reasonable. I can't check now cos I changed them to try and get the HD turned off. Presumably if EAC was using the HD (it was burning a 74min wav) the HD wouldn't have spun down anyway?

So a full wipe it is. Unfortunately I've no XP CDs around so I'll have to travel home and get them. In the meantime I guess I should just leave the laptop turned off and not abuse the poor HD.

Thanks guys! Any other info I could provide you with Striker I've given what I can see?

P.S. Can you unscrew the laptop and add a replacement HD? Or is it just shagged permanently? I can't see why not the former but I'm feeling kinda negative right now! What kind of connection do they use? IDE or SCSI - I'm not too up on the whole laptop workings as you mighta guessed!

StRiKeR

thye have different connection rather than normal ide, it works the same way as an ide tho! you dont have to open up the whole thing on most laptop but some of them are very odd and require you to open up the complete casing! if your HDD been badly damage due to over heat then get another HDD, even if it returns to normal working order would you trust it again really? I mean 2 hrs continusly spinning forward and back really doesn't help! you could try doing a low level format which might help fixing it, then do a fresh install but if you see the hdd doing the same thing again even for a second, get a new one, coz its not gonna last!