Is it my Hard Drive or Windows XP SP3 ?

newbie2

Hey all, any help on this would be great.
Recently installed SP3 for XP home. The other night I left the PC doing a Deep Virus Scan (Bitdefender). The next morining the scan had completed but the desktop was frozen. The HD light at the front of the machine was on. I restarted the PC by pressing the power button for 7 seconds. When rebooting I get an error message saying that NTR.dll is missing. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to resart.

Did that.

Get another message saying no operating system found. Oh No. Inserted the WinXP installation disc and booted from it. Ran the repair program. Windows boot no probs. Does a chkdisc and finds that 4 sectors are unreadable.

Great.

Then after about 8 hours I was doing a fair bit on in - had a few progs running, and the hdd shut down. Everything froze. Restarted and it seemed fine. A few hours later, the hdd made a sound that sounded like it was shutting down - like a click. The desktop froze, after a few seconds, it was back as normal. About an hour later the same thing happens.

Decided to go to bed.

Today I turned the PC on and get it freezes on the log in screen. I restart and get an error - The following file is missing. Please install: Windows Root \ System32 \ hal.dll. Inserted the WINXP disc and did the reapair thing again and rebooted windows. It's fine now. (about 30mins).

Any body got any ideas whats causing this? I have copied any of the files I think I may need such as my documents to another drive that I have installed. Do you think the HDD is knackered or should I go down the windows reinstall?


FYI


DELL DIMENSION 4600i
WINXP SP3
P4
Motherboard INTEL SPRINGDALE-G i865G
System Memory 1024 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
Disk Drive Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Disk Drive ST3320620A (320 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Optical Drive _NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG (DVD+R9:4x, DVD+RW:16x/4x, DVD-RW:16x/4x, DVD-ROM:16x, CD:48x/24x/48x DVD+RW/DVD-RW)
Network Adapter 3Com EtherLink XL 10/100 PCI TX NIC (3C905B-TX)
Network Adapter Cayman 3300 Series USB Network Adapter #3 - Packet Scheduler Miniport

AlmightyCushion

It sounds like the hard drive is buggered. Back up everything while you still can.

The Muppet

Download the maxtor diagnostic Utility from their site and test the drive yourself. It used to be called powermax. That should tell you if its a hard disk issue.

<edit> I just noticed its a Dell most of them have diagnostics built in, Press f12 when the blue dell logo screen appears at boot up and you should be able to access diagnostics from the menu. </edit>

brianwalshcork

Definitely sounds like your hard drive is on the way out.

As someone else posted, back up your data now

You didn't mention how old your PC is, but given that it's a P4, Dimenson 4600, I'd guess it's approaching 3 years. I''ve had a lot of drives fail at around 3 years old.

I wouldn't even bother running the diagnostics - if you've already got bad sectors, then things have started go downhill - they are not going to improve. Running the diagnostics might cause more damage, and decrease your chances of getting your data off.

Brian

newbie2

I wish Id read the previous post sooner. Dl'd the SeaTools Diagnostics Utility for the Maxtor and sure enough there are errors on it. failed the majority of the tests I ran. So it looks like it's pretty bollixed. My next question is:

Can I install WINXP onto a partion on my other drive and and run windows from there and then backing up any files or folders from the original drive before either formatting or buying a new one?

quaidox

newbie2 wrote: »

I wish Id read the previous post sooner. Dl'd the SeaTools Diagnostics Utility for the Maxtor and sure enough there are errors on it. failed the majority of the tests I ran. So it looks like it's pretty bollixed. My next question is:

Can I install WINXP onto a partion on my other drive and and run windows from there and then backing up any files or folders from the original drive before either formatting or buying a new one?

yes you can, and you should not bother trying to reuse the old drive, as it is on the way out at this stage....

brianwalshcork

It's difficult to say how bad the drive is, but at this point you think about the value of the data on the hard drive.

If it's information that's valuable to you, and you really don't want to lose it then you should consider a data recovery service - but you'll be looking at the best part of EUR 500.

If the information is not entirely critical, then I'd do as you suggested - install XP on a partition on another hard drive. I'd recommend that you remove the damaged hard drive completely while you are doing the XP installation. There's no point in spinning up the drive unnecessarily.

When you've got XP install, stick in the original hard drive and try to copy the data to the good hard disk.

Brian

Overheal

drives are cheap. just as well to replace it with a new one either way.

newbie2

Thanks all,
I'm managing to copy most of the stuff i want onto my other drive as we speak. Luckily i've done most of my storage on the big drive and just installed games and apps onto my c drive (the bollixed one). I'll be able to reinstall most of the apps and games i want onto a new drive with no probs.

This minor disaster has got me thinking. If I'm going to have to by a new hd, is it time to invest in a whole new pc? You know new Graphics card, sound card, MOBO. I suppose I could keep alot of the stuff i have already to keep costs down but it might be a plan.

Komplett have a couple prebuilt towers, is there any particular one i should get to make sure that my large drive (the one with all my stuff on it) and some of my other stuff (DVD writer, modem are compatible?

thanks again

Dartz

That sound was the read head crashing into the spinning harddisk itself. It spins so fast, and so close that the read head scrapes the top of it, destroying those sectors.

It also scatters particles accross the disk which increase the chances of future crashes even further, aswell as damging more sectors.

So what everybody has said here is true. If you really need to keep that disk going though, you could try googling 'The Harddisk Freezer Trick'.

newbie2

Dartz wrote: »

'The Harddisk Freezer Trick'.

wow. not going to bother with that but interesting to see what someone came up with in desparation.

looked on komplett and found these:


Gigabyte Triton 180 Black
Corsair Powersupply 550W Bulk, black,
MSI K9AGM3-FD, AMD 690G+SB600, DVI,
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz Socket AM2
Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 4096MB CL5,
Point of View GeForce 8500GT 512MB,GDDR2
Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB SATA2
NEC DVD±RW burner AD-7200A, IDE,
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Eng
PC box

might give it a go

Overheal

would not reccomend that trick except to a very very desperate soul that had already backed their shít up. Thinking about what would happen from the condensation alone makes my skin crawl.

Dartz

If the drive is dying though, and he needs to get something off it. It costs you nothing to further break and already dead component, and the upshot of it is, you might get a good chunk of your data back.

Downshot is you bugger the dying drive further.

Since you will need to buy a new one anyway, that's not much of a downshot

challengemaster

newbie2 wrote: »

This minor disaster has got me thinking. If I'm going to have to by a new hd, is it time to invest in a whole new pc? You know new Graphics card, sound card, MOBO. I suppose I could keep alot of the stuff i have already to keep costs down but it might be a plan.

Komplett have a couple prebuilt towers, is there any particular one i should get to make sure that my large drive (the one with all my stuff on it) and some of my other stuff (DVD writer, modem are compatible?

thanks again

A hard drive costs probably 50 quid? at most, for probably 160 gigs at the least. new mobo would mean new cpu, new ram, etc, etc. Certain things just arent compatible. However, Things like Hard drive, DVD drives, etc, are all compatible. No particular one you should get. Also building your own pc would probably be cheaper & more bang for buck than prebuilt, but if you'd rather get a pre-built one.. I'd advise against the one you've picked below.

newbie2 wrote: »

looked on komplett and found these:


Gigabyte Triton 180 Black
Corsair Powersupply 550W Bulk, black,
MSI K9AGM3-FD, AMD 690G+SB600, DVI,
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz Socket AM2
Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 4096MB CL5,
Point of View GeForce 8500GT 512MB,GDDR2
Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB SATA2
NEC DVD±RW burner AD-7200A, IDE,
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Eng
PC box

might give it a go

Reason being, It's fairly crappy cpu/mobo wise. Intel chips are cheaper and better.. and that is kinda old kit.

There's a pre-built on komplett (Entry i-10 Black) for 100euro more than the one above (customise and add a graphics card and 2 more gigs of ram) is much better, and has a monitor. Remove the monitor and its 601 euro. Cheaper and better pc

newbie2

What about the
KOMPLETT™ Gamer i-20 Black


NZXT ALPHA Black w/Window side panel,
Corsair Powersupply 550W Bulk, black,
MSI P35 NEO-F, P35, Socket-775, DDR2,
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
OCZ Platinum DDR2 PC6400 4096MB KIT,
Gainward GeForce 8800GT 512MB GDDR3,
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB SATA2
NEC DVD±RW burner AD-7200S, 20x, SATA,
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Eng


I'd be looking for a qute good graphics card - what about the MOBO and CPU - are they any good?

Overheal

Dartz wrote: »

If the drive is dying though, and he needs to get something off it. It costs you nothing to further break and already dead component, and the upshot of it is, you might get a good chunk of your data back.

Downshot is you bugger the dying drive further.

Since you will need to buy a new one anyway, that's not much of a downshot

you also need to consider the potential for feedback. Theres a slim chance it might do damage to the MoBo.

newbie2

I suppose i better tell you all where i am at the moment. Ive installed winXP onto a partition on my 300g hdd. I'm booting off of that. Went into BIOS and diabled the primary master drive. And am now booting off the primary slave drive. This is probably a bad idea. i don't really know what else to do. I didn't want to unplug the older maxtor drive as i'm able to dip into now and again form the new windows and take stuff off of it. However the new windows insall is a little unstable. I get a couple or errors when booting up but it seems to ride along ok. I suspect these errors are caused by leaving everything plugged in (USB) while doing the reinstall. I know I'm a donk. Most of the stuff I want is off the old drive now but space is at a premium. Me thinks a new PC is the way to go......

BKtje

Can you tell us what the error's are?

newbie2

I did at the start of this thread.