[mrnoonan]

Have HP Pavilion ds9000 has Intel core duo T5550, 4GB mem, 350GB HD, wireless
Win Vista 64bit Home Premium fully updated except for last Malicious software update (freezes)
McAfee Security Suite updated.

Friend's machine and she is a cautious user and this recently occurred. I had this machine pretty cleaned up and current.

Have run CHKDISK found 4 bad sectors but I can't find log.
Have run CCleaner lots wrong with registry (saved and cleaned out), cleaned up temp files
Have run Malware Bytes Free -no errors - quick and deep scan
Have run AutoRuns -found and removed 4 no file found entries.
Have run Orthos Prime to test memory/cpus stress for 5 hrs -no errors
Have found this error in Event Manager:
[Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.]
Read threads that said error can be removed but machine(s) reported still unstable. Didn't try fixes - seemed not worth it.
Have huge event manager logs - 40MB +.

I can run some programs:
Have un-installed extraneous programs (some freezes during un-install)
Have run Windows Update - Security Update + malicious froze,
re-ran Security update only - successful
re-ran Malicious update - froze (have run this 6-7 times)
Sometimes at login screen long time, sleep(?) mode then autoboot.
Sometime opaque screen
always cannot launch ctl+alt+delete Task Manager

I can use file sharing to get to this computer as I doubt I can keep a browser up and running long enough to download (but have done so with small programs) with Safari.

Need help with this. Thanks Mike Noonan

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The bad sectors on the hard drive is the problem. You need to replace the hard drive and put Vista back on the new drive.

[Neil Jones]

The bad sectors on the hard drive is the problem. You need to replace the hard drive and put Vista back on the new drive.

[mrnoonan]

Neil,

Where is the Chkdsk log file located?

[Neil Jones]

There isn't one. Vista and 7 don't make them now.
The only place you may find one is in the Event Viewer, but this also isn't guaranteed.

Your report of 4 bad sectors tells you everything. The drive is on the way out. It needs replacing. It will not get any better, in fact it'll get worse and then eventually keel over and die altogether.

[mrnoonan]

Neil,
I am rejecting your diagnosis on the disk drive issue. I re-ran chkdsk and there were NO errors reported on any indexes, file directories, and file data. Those 4 error were reported after the free space was scanned.

I've been in computer mfg for 40 yrs and dealing with disk errors was solved long ago. Engineers early on designed disk hardware (at least early 70's or before) that would force a screech pattern to be written on a bad sector. This was done so that the sector would not be used again and create false reads or writes. For example, you can force a disk image by writing 100's of times and successfully write a "good" image but the magnetic properties would not hold and eventually or immediately would return a read error.

Modern disks are expected to have bad sectors as part of the mfg process. These drives have a reserve pool of sectors in an overflow area. A bad sector is mapped into this area for a substitute sector to keep things flowing, i.e., the program never sees the hiccup.

The S.M.A.R.T disk tracking system monitors this pool and when the used sector reaches some predetermined level warning are start to be issued. The user has plenty of time to respond to a hard drive replacement.

Now what I want is someone with a Tech Staff rating to help me solve what I believe to be a software problem.

Thank you.

[Neil Jones]

You are free to disagree with me, but when CHKDSK starts reporting errors on its summary screen, it basically means, by the process you've described, there are no free good sectors left. By this point it usually means the drive is destined to go down hill as bad sectors tend to multiply like rabbits. There is software that claims to be able to fix bad sectors but I personally don't believe in any of them as bad sectors are physical problems.

SMART technology, by the way, means nothing, it's perfectly possible for a half-dead drive to be flagged up as SMART status good. It is predictive and not always correct.