Hard Drive Feezes on defrag/virus scan/surface test and more

[socalsurf]

Then the Hard Drive freezes and causes me to re-boot???

I have an older AMD K6-2 350mhz (its a HP boxed system) running 98 first edition. I plan to upgrade soon (as evident by earlier posts). The system has a small 4 gig HD and 96 Mb of memory.

The problem is that I cant: run scandisk, defrag, run a surface test, use my virus can ect. Now I did run scandisk in dos and also was able to defrag when I disabled the screensaver and stopped all the windows apts except explorer. But still, I want to figure out why my HD hangs up. Whenever I try to do one of the above functions I hear a click and then the system is frozen????

You guys have been a huge help so far, I would appreciate any help here

thanks

PS - I accidentally posted this in the general discussion but im learning

[daveleau]

Please let us know when you post in the wrong area, we can move the thread. Thanks.

Does the drive click at other times besides when you are trying to defrag? Are you having any major system lock-ups?
Dave

[socalsurf]

It seems that any time I try to analyze or test the drive (scandisk, defag, virus, surface test (all my Nortan utilities)) it clicks and sticks? But, the system as a whole runs fine though a bit slow at times.

I dont know if its related but my cable (internet) speed is not all as fast as it used to be --- I know that as more people come on it slows down but my brother is flying at 1.5mb and im at about half that. We live pretty close and have similar IP's if that matters -- but this is off topic though i thought that maybee I have a virus and it has caused my system to slow and the hard drive to freeze???

How much free space do you have?

I am also thinking your brother has more ram than you do correct?

[socalsurf]

yes he does, but 6 months ago with my same system, i was moving at the same speed. He has several computers (im employed part time by him ...) and the slow PII moves way faster than my comp. But his PII does have 128mb vs my 96 mb (not that big a difference is it?)

Im planning on getting a new system with a an athlon xp 1700 or 1800 so that should solve the problem ---- or I might find out that the cable in my area really has slowed down. Ill let you guys know though.
any other ideas

Thanks

[Inanis]

Your problem is probably just a bad sector on the hard drive fouling up the works, causing the hard drive to reset itself, and thus causing the pc to lockup.

[socalsurf]

Inanis

Is there a way I can fix this? Like I said, even after successfully running scandisk and defrag, it still is a problem.

Thanks

[Mercenary Dragon]

If it is a bad sector, I don't think there is anyway to repair those. I'm no tech god by anymeans to don't take that as fact but it sounds to me like you may have a faulty HD. Put it to pasture and get a new one

[socalsurf]

Yep

Thats what i thought and I know im going to get a new system but I thought i would try to fix it.

Thanks for all the tips

[JohnE.]

Try running Norton's Disk Doctor from a clean boot and do a full surface scan for bad sectors.

- Restart and press F8 just before Windows begins to load and select "Command Prompt Only".
- At the command prompt type, "ndd" (without the quotes) and press enter.
- Before starting the scan go to Options and select "Fix Errors Automatically". If you don't select this you'll have to manually ok each repair which could get very tedious/time-consuming.

Note that this operation may take several hours or overnight to complete depending on the amount of errors (if any).

Disk Doctor should be able to find and fix any bad sectors and mark them as bad so that data is no longer written to the bad areas. If there are a great many bad sectors it may be time to consider a new drive. With only a few bad sectors the drive should be ok long enough for you to backup the data before replacing the drive, at least it won't be running slow/crashing on you once it fixes any disk errors.

Good luck


JohnE.