Ok, this is not my computer, but I have physically seen the problem. Hes not to savvy with computers, though I got the idea from what he said. Basically, he loads windows XP with service pack 2, loads his firewall and anti virus/spy, loads all the preloaded programs, etc. Everything runs fine for a couple days. Then, the computer starts having weird problems and random Stop screens. I looked the errors up , and they basically point to a hardware problem with the HD listed in the possible problems. When I put in the Windows cd and try to fix the boot.ini and other files, it works fine for a couple days, then does it again. If you redo windows, it runs fine again for a couple days, then crashes. But, I can access safe mode and it runs fine. Though I only played around on safe mode for about 5 min checking things. So basically the question is, should I replace the hard drive, its a Hitachi which I have seen alot of problems with them, or could it be something else?

Hi Phantom Miria and welcome to Geeks To Go.
Go into the Event Viewer in the Administrative Tools, located in the Control Panel. Please post the last 4 error messages here.

Wow...umm...theres easily 600 disk errors from 3/4/07 - 3/8/07 then 7/9/07 - 7/10/07. I cant select them all but I can hit the bar 8 times on full screen and it doesnt hit the end. Then theres around 100 cdrom errors. 6 errors in the browsed with 7 warnings. Those are the big ones. Now, the last three errors recorded are Disk Error at 6:18:25 and 6:18:28 then 6:14:22. But, from 6:14:00 (time it was turned on about) to 6:14:22 there was 11 disk errors, and an atapi warning.

The first error,
The Device, \device\harddisk0\D, has a bad block

Well, the last 3 are the same and the same bytes. So...I figure its the hard drive.

Now, the cd rom also has the same thing. Also the same bytes, well the 4 numbers, not what comes after.
The Device, \device\cdrom0\D, has a bad block

have you tried running chkdsk with the f ans r switches...chkdsk /f/r

I did in March, but I havent today. I forget the results, but if I remember correctly there was alot of errors.

Its recovered orphaned files, with the file name *.cur

Its repairing unreadable security descriptors data stream.

It fixed the mirror cope of the security descriptors.

and now its stuck at 0% on stage 4.

OK, it replaced bad clusters in file 292 of name \windows\system32\crtdll.dll.



This post has been edited by Phantom Miria: Jul 10 2007, 08:53 AM

Sounds like it might be a bad hard drive. you should go to the manufacturers website ( for the hard drive not the computer ) and download their utility to check the hard drive.... IF you have the resourses to do so you might want to put his hard drive into another computer before running the diagnostic.... that would eliminate the hard drive controller ( and the cpu/memory) from the equation....

good luck

if you get up and running...make backups of anything you can't live without immediately...That drive sounds like its going to die soon..

Well theres nothing on it worth keeping, just windows. But, after I did defrag and scan disk, all the checks and everything, it hasent errored since this morning. So, I shall mess around with it for a couple days and see what happens. He said it takes about 4 days for it to start acting up. Im loading some programs now to the windows he loaded in March, everything is going good now. But...for how long no one knows.

just tell him to stay current on backing up any data he can't live without...burn to cd /dvd's