[jamiemac]

On start up hard drive churns away for up to an hour preventing proper operation of the machine and neither the mem or CPU are fully utilised on task manager. Sounds like it is busy working away on something but no idea what. I have even used sysconfig to limit startup to virus checker (Kaspersky) only.

Also can not copy any files to either DVD writer or usb hard drive. USB drive finds first 10 folders immediately and then takes a very logn time to find the remaining 20 folders (oftern just hangs (Not responding), but this may bebecause PC is overloaded with this other mysterious process?

Any help much appreciated?


PC specs are:
Vista Home Basic SP2
HP s7710.uk
Windows Rating 2.2
Processoe Intel® celeron ® M cpu 430 @ 1.73 GHz
Mem 1.00 GB
32 bit

Hard drive NTFS 144GB 79.9 GB free

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Hi jamiemac
First suggestion is to secure any important data on the HDD as there is a possibility it may fail.
http://www.geekstogo...over-your-data/

Do you have a Vista or a recovery disk?

[phillpower2]

Hi jamiemac
First suggestion is to secure any important data on the HDD as there is a possibility it may fail.
http://www.geekstogo...over-your-data/

Do you have a Vista or a recovery disk?

[jamiemac]

Thanks Phil, I should do somewhere I guess. What would I do with it?

[phillpower2]

Once you have secured your data I suggest running SFC, don`t do it first in case the HDD fails.

Go to Start then to Run/Search;
Type in compmgmt.msc and click Enter
On left side click on Disk Management
On right side you will see your hard drive.
Now I need you to take a screenshot and attach it to your next reply.
Do the following to take a screenshot while the above is open and showing on your desktop.

To capture and post a screenshot;

Click on the ALT key + PRT SCR key..its on the top row..right hand side..now click on start...all programs...accessories...paint....left click in the white area ...press CTRL + V...click on file...click on save...save it to your desktop...name it something related to the screen your capturing... BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A .JPG ...otherwise it may be to big to upload...
then after typing in any response you have... click on browse...desktop...find the screenshot..select it and click on the upload button...then on the lower left...after it says upload successful...click on add reply like you normally would.

Click on Start and select Run... type sfc /scannow (note the space) (Let this run undisturbed until the window with the blue progress bar goes away)
SFC - Which stands for System File Checker retrieves the correct version of the file from %Systemroot%\System32\Dllcache or the Windows installation source files, and then replaces the incorrect file.
If you want to see what was replaced, right-click My Computer and click on Manage. In the new window that appears, expand the Event Viewer (by clicking on the + symbol next to it) and then click on System.

Run the HDDs diagnostics tool;
Make sure you select the tool that is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Depending on the program it'll create a bootable floppy or a bootable CD.
If the downloaded file is the .iso type use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn the .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option) and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba then unfortunately you're out of luck because Toshiba do not provide a diagnostic tool so try the Hitachi or Seatools. See the following post of Digerati.

[Digerati]

If your hard drive is made by Toshiba then unfortunately you're out of luck because Toshiba do not provide a diagnostic tool so try the Hitachi or Seatools.

If you check that TaskTech link, you will see that Fujitsu makes the drives for Toshiba and there is a Toshiba/Fujitsu diagnostics program.

[phillpower2]

If your hard drive is made by Toshiba then unfortunately you're out of luck because Toshiba do not provide a diagnostic tool so try the Hitachi or Seatools.

If you check that TaskTech link, you will see that Fujitsu makes the drives for Toshiba and there is a Toshiba/Fujitsu diagnostics program.

Thanks for pointing that out Digerati

[Digerati]

NP.

[jamiemac]

Phillpower2 and Digeratti,

Many thanks for your replies. I am actually helping a friend here who is less confident than I on solving these kind of problems. I am going to be away for a week now so please bear with me. I will pass on your advice, but my friend will probably prefer to wait for me to implement your advice. In the mean time I have got him to purchase 2x1 Gb RAM sticks (using the Crucial memory scanner tool) to get him to his PC's max RAM capability and to also buy a copy of Windows 7 upgrade as my experience of upgraing from Vista to Win 7 has been very positive on two previous occasions.

Edited by jamiemac, 26 March 2012 - 02:19 AM.

[phillpower2]

Ok, we will be here when you return.

[jamiemac]

Ok,

so I successfully upgraded to 2 Gb RAM

I also got a screen shot of compmgmt.msc which showed everything as healthy and a "/C:" and "/D:restore" arrangement. I can provide that screen shot if required.

I also ran the sfc /scannow tool although there was a problem because when run from the windows run box a cmd window flickered and then disappeared. I tried a few times. So I then tried runing it from a "manually" called up cmd window and it objected that admin rights were required (even though there is only one user on that PC and he has admin rights). In the end I had to do a right click “run as admin" on CMD.exe and then do sfc /scannow from within that cmd window command line. Seemed odd that I couldn't do it from within windows itself. It ran for 30 mins and reported it had fixed some corruptiosn but not all. Again I can provide the log file if required. By the way the log file was odd because I did not have "permissions" to open it so had had to copy it on to a USB stick and view it with a diff computer).

I have not run the HDDs diagnostics tool as I was not sure which one to run and I hoped it would be OK to run it later on. The PC has a Samsung hard drive by the way.

Lastly I installed the Vista to Win 7 upgrade and it appears to have worked well with the PC now running much better.

So it may just be that the issue is solved for now..?

What do you think?

Many thanks

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update

If you have upgraded to W7 and the system is running ok then I would leave well alone and simply monitor the HDDs performance by the operating speed and listening for unusual noises etc.

If any problems reappear then run SeaTools for Windows v1.2.0.6 http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287 (Seagate and Samsung are partners BTW) and then run Chkdsk;

Go to Start and then to Run
Type in Chkdsk /r Note the space between k and /
Click Enter ...It will probably ask if you want to do this on the next reboot...click Y

If the window doesn't shutdown on its own then reboot the system manually. On reboot the system will start the chkdsk operation
This one will take longer then chkdsk /f

Note... there are 5 stages...
It may appear to hang at a certain percent for a hour or more or even back up and go over the same area...this is normal...
DO NOT SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN WHILE CHKDSK IS RUNNING OR YOU CAN HAVE SEVERE PROBLEMS
This can take several hours to complete.
When completed it will boot the system back into windows.