[tawcnysc]

my computer crashed Saturday night when restarting the screen froze on the window's is shutting down for over 2 hours so i had to turn the pc of by the power supply. ever since then the pc has been slow to load with a black screen during startup. when the computer does load everything goes slow and the computer freezes for a while if i click on the start menu, if you open my computer it become unresponsive but i can get into my documents and hard drives. add and remove programs just displays a message claiming the list of programs is being populated.

i have ran (all in safe mode) AVG, spybot, adaware, cwshredder, cleaned up the hard drive and registry

i have isolated the computer from the network

any help would be greatly appreciated as i have a lot of coursework to get done on the pc

 

[Tumbleweed36]

Hi,

If this were mine, I would clear the CMOS to see if you got some corrupted CMOS settings while shutting it down from the power supply and it did not have time (not your fault) to save settings. Some times you just have to do that and shut them off. Anyhow, that is the first thing I would try to get the BIOS setup menu back to default.

Addendum: You can do that by unplugging the computer, grounding yourself, and pulling the motherboard battery out for a few minutes.....Then replace the battery and take it for a test drive.

Post back with questions/concerns.

 

[tawcnysc]

ok i took the battery out for a couple of minutes went into the bios settings and reset everything back to default. but I'm still having the same problem but thank for the suggestion

i found another problem in that when i try to open the second hard drive it claims it is not formatted and the property's display it having 0 bytes capacity this is the drive that has all my movies and software on. i have tried disabling the second hard drive in the bios settings but it is still going slow

the hard drive is a samsung 250gb and i brought and installed it about 5 months ago

 

[tawcnysc]

found the problem but not solution

ok i removed my other HDD which i use mainly for storage of videos and media and the computer works fine just disabling it in the bios did nothing but on this HDD is a lot of programs and cd images as i don't like carrying around a pile of cd's from my home to university residence that will take me ages to replace so any solutions other that a complete format would be very helpful

 

[Tumbleweed36]

Hi,

Have you checked or tried another ribbon cable? They don't do this often, but they can tank on you. I would start there and if that does not help, then we will try something else. Might be a good idea to download Seatools from the manufacturer's website and have it run a check on the drive.

Here is a link to all hard drive manufacturer's utilities:

Manufacturer’s websites for the utilities of all drive makes and models

http://tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

 

[tawcnysc]

i changed the cable but no change to the system and downloaded the software for the drive the information before the boot up shows the label that was previously on the drive before the crash. I ran a file recovery on the HDD and it found all the lost data but the recovery program crashes if i try to restore the larger files (over 1gig) is there any solution other than a format and finding all my old dvds and games

 

[Tumbleweed36]

Hi,

You might try a repair install which would not lose your data and would entail having a valid OS disk with a valid number. Then, you would have reinstall SP2 and some of the drivers. However, the upside is that your data is normally not lost in the process.

Here is a link you might want to read:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[tawcnysc]

the hard drive in question does not have windows on it it just a storage drive i have managed to recover some file by leaving the computer for a few hours bu now when i restart the pc i get an S.M.A.R.T. error telling me to back up and replace the primary slave so is there any point in trying to fix this drive or should i just cut my losses and throw the drive away.

 

[Tumbleweed36]

HI,

If you have not tried the drive manufacturer's utility and tested that against the drive, might be worth a try, but a long shot simply to try to retreive the rest of your data.. Usuallly when you get that error, they are about to die and are not fixable. What I am saying is that with the drive manufacturer's utility, you might be able to at least get some more of your data off. Let us know how it all comes out and good luck.

 

[Kalim]

Here's where to find the utility to test the HDD integrity;

- For your manufacturer/model, download its utility from HERE
- Run a thorough scan and see if any errors are given.

Let us know how that goes.

 

[tawcnysc]

all sorted

it all sorted now thanks for your help in the end I emailed samsung for the RMA address as the one on there website does not exist and got a new HDD send out in a few days which is now all installed and working fine

thanks again for all the help

 

[dai]

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