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Hardware Problems - Frequent Crashing


Samurai

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Hey, I'm having a few problems on my PC at home at the moment when I try to run something intensive such as Nero, even loading up websites.

I'm already replacing my secondary hard drive as it's not functioning how it should, but does anyone know of a tool that can diagnose a PC's problems fairly quickly and is light on resources?

It's been crashing for the last few weeks now, where upon I will have to soft reboot to get everything back to normal.

Anyway, I need something to diagnose my PC, as I have no idea what it is that's causing it. On top of that I keep getting a message regarding my secondary HDD - "Delayed Write Failed". I've googled this and done some of the fixes but no luck. I think it's on the way out anyway as I keep having trouble burning files, opening files, and extracting rar's from it. It's my main P2P HDD so I want to back everything up ASAP. I've ordered a new HDD which should be at mine but Weds or Thurs but I'm sure this wouldn't cause the crashing, would it? I hope my main HDD is not failing too as it's going to be one hell of an expensive month for me. I was looking to get a new mobile this month but not going to happen now.

Anyway if anyone knows of an app, could you point me in a general direction. I'm at work now :)

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They're all fine. All the voltages are ~5 which isn't too bad.

I think I've nailed it as my PC had to be started no less than 5 times before it loaded up. It's my main HDD IMO. I'm trying to back everything up as quick as I can I just hope it holds up. It makes this horrible whirring sound upon starting up and it crashes when doing simple tasks such as loading up Messenger.

I'm hoping Nero won't cause it to have a heart attack but I have no choice at the moment. I think copying from one HDD to another will be more strenuous.

If you don't see me for a few days something has gone tits up. I've ordered a HDD at the moment, although it's only an 80GB. Anything is better at this point.

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They're all fine. All the voltages are ~5 which isn't too bad.

I think I've nailed it as my PC had to be started no less than 5 times before it loaded up. It's my main HDD IMO. I'm trying to back everything up as quick as I can I just hope it holds up. It makes this horrible whirring sound upon starting up and it crashes when doing simple tasks such as loading up Messenger.

I'm hoping Nero won't cause it to have a heart attack but I have no choice at the moment. I think copying from one HDD to another will be more strenuous.

If you don't see me for a few days something has gone tits up. I've ordered a HDD at the moment, although it's only an 80GB. Anything is better at this point.

quick way to tell if its the harddrive giong is to power down first :). then disconnect the sata or eide ribbon. keep the power connected to the harddrive. turn the computer on. if no sound then its the ribbon if sound its your harddrive.

btw i notice back 2 years ago that my 3 harddrives inside the computer where getting hot. (cheap intel fan that came with the newest intel chip makes noise at 3500 rpms) i found out if i space the harddrives and keep the side cover off that i didnt have any more problems. also dont use p2p programs that dont space out the soon to be downloaded stuff. (kazaa is bad at bit by bit and having it everywhere leading to big time defraging) newsgroupsing causes defraging too. ei using agent

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I'm at work now. Last night was a nightmare for me. I couldn't even load up Windows, so I thought I was going to lose everything...

However I managed to load up in "Safe Mode" and backup all my music and program files. I have lists too that I printed out of certain things I can get again.

My HDD should be arriving today so hopefully it'll just be a question of formatting it and installing XP on once more.

Just out of interest, does anyone know if my XP Home Serial will work on Professional? I haven't tried it but if it won't work then I'll leave it.

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One of the best diagnostics apps I've used yet would have to be SiSoftware Sandra 2005, runs rings around EVEREST Ultimate and has tons of features, benchmarks, environmental monitoring (love this when stability/benchmarking) and its' free:

http://www.guru3d.com/

It mightn't help with your particular situation but worth getting.

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Yeh, there good tools for finding out about ones system. I doubt they would help in Sam's case.

The best tool for solving problem i've found is experience. If someone has experianced a similar problem they can adapt the skils they learnt in that case and adapt them accordingly.

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Well my new hard drive still hasn't arrived today so I'm trying new things and may have come up with a breakthrough.

I believe it's my secondary HDD on IDE that may be the cause. I've unplugged it from my PSU and IDE cable and booted up and I've been running online for the last hour checking my email, listening to music, and even downloading from usenet.

Would my secondary hard drive (my main drive for downloading) cause the problems I've mentioned (frequent crashing / no movement from mouse etc...)?

If it is, I'll need to know which drive I should replace because I thought it was the one my OS was installed on. Now I'm confused.

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yeah, it could, had one of those 120gb HDs go out on me a while back and windows locked up completely (and it was a slave drive too) :\

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Yea well if it's my slave drive that's causing these problems I'm gonna lose 200GB worth of download stuff including all my films and tv series! :)

Damn this sucks!

Is there a way I can find out which one is faulty? How did you find out it was the slave drive causing problems? :unsure:

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Yea well if it's my slave drive that's causing these problems I'm gonna lose 200GB worth of download stuff including all my films and tv series! :)

Damn this sucks!

Is there a way I can find out which one is faulty? How did you find out it was the slave drive causing problems? :unsure:

well there the ribbon test like i said above. and sinc eyou have the slave disconnected adn your ocmputer seems to be running i would say yeap.

newsgrouping can defrag your harddrive up pretty good too.

you could get an extranel harddrive case and put your internal in it and run it through usb. if the harddrive is sata you will have to look for an harddrive case for it. eide are easy to find.

oh have you check its pins in the back of the harddrive? and ribbon replace with another to test that too? space the harddrive aprt for more air between them.

im going to guess you are using sp2 right? sp1 had 2 large harddrive patches require form sp2 and a patch from sp2 for 1gb ram

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Guest Jdawg

If you have an operating system on your slave you could set it as your master and see if you have the same problem. If not try booting into safe and see if it still does it, you also might be able to transfer your files to the master in safe mode and save them.

You also might have a program trying to run off of your slave possibly a virus, worm or spyware. you said that it is your main hdd for p2p easy to download something undesirable on p2p(speaking from experiance). If you can save your files to your master drive try formatting.

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There is this if it may help, O&O DiskRecovery V4.0, Professional data recovery made easy:

http://www.nsaneforums.com/ind...?showtopic=2808

I also have an (eBook) 200 Ways To Revive A Hard Drive (has some pretty radical ideas for dying HDD, eg. put in freezer, dump data, but HDD is defintely dead afterwards) don't know if it will help if you want a copy PM me and give an email, can't seem to attach anything here.

I sympathise with you.

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There is this if it may help, O&O DiskRecovery V4.0, Professional data recovery made easy:

http://www.nsaneforums.com/ind...?showtopic=2808

I also have an (eBook) 200 Ways To Revive A Hard Drive (has some pretty radical ideas for dying HDD, eg. put in freezer, dump data, but HDD is defintely dead afterwards) don't know if it will help if you want a copy PM me and give an email, can't seem to attach anything here.

I sympathise with you.

winrar it then upload it on file sharing host like rapidsharing.de or the ones link on this site somewhere.

the tavern for off topics meet be okay to put it there. pm the admin beforehand maybe

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Thanks for everyone's responses. I'm pretty certain it's my slave HDD and my replacement arrived this morning when I was about to leave for work :)

I'm very happy with O&O's products so I might give their Disk Recovery a whirl. I do have it saved on my main drive, but I don't see how I could install it on the slave, and recover files as it may crash half way through.

All the pins are fine on the back, and the IDE cable is ok too.

Normally I'd be rushing home from work tonight to try this out, but as there's no work tomorrow (Good Friday) everyone at work is going out for drinks after work. Maybe this would be a good time to try it on with one of my sexy colleagues :D

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