[krae13937]

Hi,
I went on vacation a week ago. Everything was fine with computer (XP). I turned it off while I was gone. When I got back, it would freeze after about 10 mins. I have Norton and it said I needed to download updates. Would not complete. Froze. I have other programs and one said I had hard drive error, but when I tried to run program for it to correct the problem, it would freeze. I tried running chkdsk last night and it did find some probs in stage 2. It corrected them and ran until 50% completed in stage 4. It seemed to freeze, but to make sure, I let it run til this am. It was still at 50% when i woke up. I re-booted and it started up again. It went through first 3 stages fine this time, but is now stuck again at 50% of stage 4 completion. I have to go to work, so will check it again when i get home, but it does seem like it is frozen again. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to proceed? Thank you, Kim

Edited by krae13937, 15 August 2009 - 07:06 AM.

[Advertisements]

Hi krae13937 ...welcome to Geeks To Go...
can you boot into safe mode...if you can... backup everything you can't live without now just in case the drive is about to die..
do you know who manufactured the hard drive...they each have their own tools to test their drives...so if we can figure out who made the drive I can give you a link to download the tool to test the drive

[happyrock]

Hi krae13937 ...welcome to Geeks To Go...
can you boot into safe mode...if you can... backup everything you can't live without now just in case the drive is about to die..
do you know who manufactured the hard drive...they each have their own tools to test their drives...so if we can figure out who made the drive I can give you a link to download the tool to test the drive

[krae13937]

Hi,
I couldn't get into safe mode, but I did get it to load normally. I am looking at the hard drive and I don't see a name. There is this: ST3500641AS.
Darn, it just froze again. When I got home, it was still sitting at the 50% mark. I have never had problems with any computer before like this and I never backed up much. I guess it takes this to happen to learn, huh?
When I look at Dell, it says part # c9781, hard drive, 500g, s2, 7.2k, 16m lead free, sgt-tn
Does this help?
Thanks for your help,
Kim

[happyrock]

that's exactly what I needed...
go here and get SeaTools for DOS...
SeaTools for DOS can test Seagate or Maxtor Parallel ATA (PATA and IDE) and Serial ATA (SATA) interface disc drives. Because the software boots to its own operating system you can test your drive regardless of the OS installed on it. You can even test a new or completely blank drive. SeaTools for DOS will instruct the drive to run its built in Drive Self Test (DST) and give either a pass or fail status...
go read the
tutorial here first...do the long test...NOT THE SHORT test...after you click on download you will be taken to a page to accept the agreement then click on the EN ISO CD-ROM Image

if you don't have a burning program that will burn .ISO files go here and get burncdcc ..a small FAST no frills iso burning program...

NOTE...do not put a blank cd in until burncdcc opens the tray for you
1. Start by clicking on BurnCDCC.exe
2. Browse to the ISO file you want to burn on cd/dvd ....in this case its seatoolsdoss213b
3. Select the ISO file
4. click on Start

make sure in the bios the cd drive is the first boot device....put the cd in the cd drive..boot your computer....

[krae13937]

Thanks for the quick reply. One question, I am pretty good with computers in general, but this is out of my norm. Do you think it is okay for me to do this? Can I potentially make anything worse?

[happyrock]

nope it won't make things worse...it just tests the drive and if it fails you will have to replace the drive..

[krae13937]

ok, thanks -keep ur fingers crossed

[krae13937]

I just booted up and it is stopped at this:
Free Dos kernal build 2036 cvs
kernal compatibility 7.10-watcomc-80386 cpu required-fat32 support

This is free software...

getfatblock failed: oxoooooe8
invalid opcode at 039d 0000 1882 0262 0008 0000 2142 2134 214e 0262 1065 0018
53

I am assuming i did something wrong. Can you tell by this what I did?

thank you

[happyrock]

found this at seagate forums on your problem...
Having experienced BSOD problems and then Chkdsk freezing when trying to recify I downloaded SeaTools for DOS v2.07, created an ISO image on CD , changed the boot order and then ran. On start up, straight after the info about using the Free DOS kernel, the following message is displayed on the screen and the system freezes;-
"get Fatblock failed:0x000000e8".

the only Solution I found was
Temporarily disabled AHCI in the BIOS. This prevented me from being able to boot from my ST3250820AS, but it allowed SeaTools for DOS to boot from my SATA CD-ROM drive.
so give me the make and model of your computer and I will try to find where the setting is in the bios so we can try disabling AHCI

[krae13937]

Good Morning
It's a Dell Xps 410.
I saw the same info on the seagate site and wasn't sure how to do it. I did look, bt didn't see anything that said AHCI. I did download the Seatools for windows and ran the generic long test. It passed this. Is this the same kind of test? I also was able to run Dell PC Tune Up again and it didn't find any hard drive errors this time around. Could the Chkdsk have fixed the problems it found, since it did show a couple the first partial I ran? Maybe this is not a hard drive problem? My daughters did download a bunch of games from Playfirst. I have been going in and removing them, thinking that there is some kind of software conflict, but like I said earlier, it was running fine before I left for vacation. I have run scans for virus, spyware, everything that I can and all seems fine. I have noticed though pulling up task manager that my resources are running high, but I have never had freezing probs before. I have 2.4 ghz and 2 gb mem. Is there somewhere to look online to see what processes a computer shoud be running? I'm not sure which ones I can shut down to see if this makes a difference. I do have Spyware Dr installed too and looking somewhere on this site, i saw someone tell someone else to delete it? Was this for a specific instance or is this program bad? Sorry to ask so many questions. Just trying to figure something out.

Thanks again,
K

[happyrock]

dells support site is SLOOOOOW this morning...downloading their manuals now and will read them but I have other things going this morning so it may be awhile before I get back to you...

[krae13937]

I opened task mgr and closed a couple processes that I knew were fine. Closed diferent start up apps. Watching performance and saw a spike to 43% cpu usage. Right after this is when it froze.

Thanks again, whenever you can help is fine. I appreciate it alot! I'm going to try deleting some more things.

[krae13937]

My husband is leaving for Iraq in two weeks and internet is the easiest way to communicate. I borrowed a friends laptop to try to find help. This is the worst possible time for this to happen. Do you think it is better if I take it to a pro? I am in West Palm Beach, FL, if you have any suggestions.

[happyrock]

To help you troubleshoot a problem, your computer has four lights labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the front panel..
what lites are on when your booted up...
go to START..RUN...type in MSCONFIG...then click on OK or press ENTER..
click on START UP TAB...uncheck everything EXCEPT your AV and firewall...if its a laptop you have to be careful about what you uncheck or your touch pad and wireless and things like that will not function for you..
google each start up item to decide if you need it to load with windows...
unchecking them does not remove them ..they just don't launch at startup...and that free's up some resources

[happyrock]

in addition to what you uncheck using msconfig...try uninstalling Spyware Dr in the add/remove programs in the control panel and reboot
and yes chkdsk may have fixed some drive errors...
let me know how its running