Technical problem any ideas? (1 Viewer)

IanF · Dec 23, 2003

My wife's computer is acting up. Whilst she was using it the hard drive started to make loud churning noises and rapid loud bleeping nioses. Since then whilst all the programs still work and Internet traffic has been very slow.

Goolge search page takes 10 mins to download and Bird Forum pages at least 30 mins. Everything downloads fine - just ever so sloooooooooooooooooooow!

No hardware or software have been recently added and Norton Anti-virus and Utilities found nothing wrong. Even Ntlworld Correct Connect shows everyhting as being fine. I even tried fitting a new Ethernet card, changing ports and reinstalling the software. Defrag /Scandisk sow up fine apart from one bad sector on a 10.2 mb hard disk.

It's a 4 year old P111 450 machine running W98SE connected through a cable modem - tried swapping the wires round - it's not them either.

My local computer shop is closed until after the New Year. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas as to the problem?

Is likely to be a corrupted driver or a hardware problem or something entirely different ?

SimonC · Dec 23, 2003

A hard-drive making noises is a sure sign of imminent failure! If you can, I would strongly recommend you backup any important files on the disk ASAP!
The sounds you are hearing are most likely caused by the heads coming into contact with the platters - not a good thing! I think it's only a matter of time before the HD falls over completely I'm afraid

BTW, another sign would be if that one bad sector multiplies itself.
Run ScanDisk again & if you get what is known as "Creeping Bad Sector Syndrome" (new ones every time) you'll know the drive is on it's way out

cuckooroller · Dec 23, 2003

In total agreement with Simon. Imminent HDD failure. Save files and replace the HDD which may be a problem until after Xmas.

helenol · Dec 23, 2003

Look on the bright side Ian, you can go and buy and nice shiny brand new one!

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

Hi Ian,

I think you have a dying hard drive.

Open up the case and check the temperature of it, it may run cooler with the case open.

Do you have access to a second hard disk or usb zip drive to save your data to?

Andy.

SimonC · Dec 23, 2003

Is the HDD activity light on most of the time now?
If it is (& I have a suspicion it will be) this will be the cause of the slow down, as the Disk struggles to read/write data (don't forget it'll be trying to keep up with a lot more under the surface than you are actually doing!)

Sorry the news is not good, but as Helen says, at least you've an excuse to buy a nice new 80Gb one now!! (try Scan.co.uk (no affilaition BTW!) )

IanF · Dec 23, 2003

Thanks for the speedy replies everyone.

I'll get cracking at finding out to how to back everything up.

Apparently it made these bleeping noises twice, about two hours apart but has been fine in that respect for over a week now. Everything appears normal - still just the one bad sector, but the slowness remains. The hard drive light hardly flickers at all and no more strange noises.

I guess it could do with a larger drive anyway, so it's no great hardship really.

walwyn · Dec 23, 2003

DONT PANIC

Nothing to worry about it is probably just a bad disk sector. This can happen if the machine is switched off without shutting down properly (hard not to do on windows). Happened to me about 2 years ago no problems since.

Try a full deep disk repair. This will find and mark the sector as bad and the computer will subsequently ignore it. You'll find the program to do this in "accessories->system tool" it is called scandisk or something similar (at least on win98). Takes about 3-4 hours to do its work.

However, if you keep getting error then is the time to panic.

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

It may be that your disk is becoming full or that the windows swapfile is very fragmented; neither of these will help your predicament.

Do a disk cleanup; delete all Temporary Internet Files (Internet Explorer - Tools - Internet Options - Delete Files), delete any file in Windows - Temp that is older than 2 days, empty your Recycle Bin. Restart in safe mode (pressing F5 as it restarts Windows) and Start - Run - Defrag.

How you defrag your Swapfile depends on your Windows version and the amount of memory (RAM) installed.

Andy.

SimonC · Dec 23, 2003

satrow said:
It may be that your disk is becoming full or that the windows swapfile is very fragmented; neither of these will help your predicament.

Do a disk cleanup; delete all Temporary Internet Files (Internet Explorer - Tools - Internet Options - Delete Files), delete any file in Windows - Temp that is older than 2 days, empty your Recycle Bin. Restart in safe mode (pressing F5 as it restarts Windows) and Start - Run - Defrag.

How you defrag your Swapfile depends on your Windows version and the amount of memory (RAM) installed.

Andy.

This is another possibility (& hopefully it turns out to be the case) however it's the fact that the HDD is/has making/made a noise that worries me. In my experience (nearly 10yrs in a few different PC manufacturers/service companies) any unusual noise a HDD makes can safely be taken as a "death rattle"! (albeit sometimes it's a little premature - but they always go fairly soon afterwards!)

Ian, do try the clean up first, as it may give the PC back some life but be mindful of the possibility that the HDD is on it's way out!

BTW, out of interest, do you know the make of your HardDrive? there are a few of the older ones (& a few new ones for that matter) that a particularly susceptible to even the slightest vibration (sneeze near some of them & they've had it!!)

Cheers

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

If you use the Scandisk/repair option, try to ensure that you make an 'undo' disk. It may be that this option only happens from DOS though. Scandisk has been known to shred the contents of a hard disk!

Andy.

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

Fujitsu MPE/F 10Gb or one of the IBM disks of that era had the worst records, in my experience; but most of them probably died within the first 14 months!

Andy.

SimonC · Dec 23, 2003

satrow said:
Fujitsu MPE/F 10Gb or one of the IBM disks of that era had the worst records, in my experience; but most of them probably died within the first 14 months!

Andy.

Well I wasn't going to name names publicly, but one of those was a prime suspect for me!

IanF · Dec 23, 2003

I gave scandisk and defrag another go but still no better though the machine itself is working even faster than it was. I keep pretty up to date with running the likes of Norton Utilities once a week, whihc has kept it going without any problems until this occurred.

I thought myself it maybe a hard disk thing after the strange noises it had made. It's just strange that they have stopped, everything works but the tansfer of data speeds are like wading through treacle.

As it's my old computer, everything XP compatable has already been transferred over to the newer one. We just miss having 'his and hers' convenience :t:

BTW it's a Maxtor 10800 10.8Gb HD, just over four years old. It's boosted to 256mb RAM and otherwise works like a dream.

I guess I'll just have to wait until the repair shop is back open again.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Ears are still open for anything further :t:

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

IanF said:
Internet traffic has been very slow.

Perhaps your system has been compromised by a trojan server - this would account for (apparently) slow internet speeds.

Mcafee's Stinger http://download.nai.com/products/mcafee-avert/stinger.exe will check for common 'nasties'; visit PcCillin Housecall site http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp for a scan and download an anti-trojan program or two.

If you have a few people near you running Kazaa servers or similar, this could also affect the amount of bandwidth you have available.......

Good luck,

Andy.

walwyn · Dec 23, 2003

IanF said:
I thought myself it maybe a hard disk thing after the strange noises it had made. It's just strange that they have stopped, everything works but the tansfer of data speeds are like wading through treacle.

That sounds like what happened to my machine when it had problems. Grinding noises at first and then very slow to run anything, save files, or download webpages etc. I think the swapfile was trying to use the bad sector or something equally critical. It might have been stimon, which continually reads and writes to disk.

Did you do the 'low level' scandisk/diskrepair? You know when windows crashes you get that annoying message "To avoid this message in the future.." and it goes through its scanning for errors nonesense, well I usually hit return to skip, but on this occassion allowed it to complete. It then came up with another message about problems - after letting it go away for a few hours to churn through the 20Gb hard drive it marked a couple of sectors as bad and normal service was resumed.

Andrew Rowlands · Dec 23, 2003

IanF said:
I gave scandisk and defrag another go (snip)

To defrag the swapfile - right click My Computer - Properties - last tab (don't remember what it is) - virtual memory (somehere there....) - tell windows not to use a swapfile ( this will delete it on reboot) click ok 'til you get the prompt to shut down (do so). Restart in safe mode (F5 or F8 for bootmenu) then defrag. When Defrag has finished go to the swapfile settings again and set it for 256 minimum (this should give you 256Mb of swapfile practically non-fragmented), with Windows allowed to use the rest of the disk if needed. Click ok and yes, ok etc..

Andy.

IanF · Dec 23, 2003

Thanks Walwyn and Satrow,

I'll give those a go as well. I did download two Trojan detectors just in case, but they found nothing. I'll give this a go too.

With the scandisk/repair I did the full surface test, that's where the one bad sector was found. I'll try the swap file thing and let you know.

Colin · Dec 23, 2003

Ian,
You haven't turned the computer through 90 degrees recently have you. E.g. if it was a tower you have not put it on its side or if it was a base unit with the monitor on it, have you tipped it on end. If a hard drive has been running for years in one plane and is then "tipped" through 90 degrees the worn bearings can cause the HDD to move a fraction and the heads struggle to find the tracks etc. This used to happen in the IT dept where I worked years ago. Even so for this to happen the HDD is on its way out.

Colin

PS I am still having problems with certain forums in BF which Ollie is still working on.

IanF · Dec 23, 2003

I just finished swap file defrag and things are still no different. I'll give the Trojan locators a go next.

I'm afraid not Colin, it's never been touched/moved since May 2003. It just suddenly developed this problem about a week ago. There hasn't been any strange noises since and the computer works fine in every respect apart from the download speed.

Nope no Trojans either.

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