Computer problems

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Vauhs

n00b
Joined
May 19, 2008
Messages
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My computer has been running sluggish for about two days now. Was searching the web the other day and computer just came to a halt and froze. So I rebooted the computer and then it wouldn't start up.

It displays the post screen but after that it went to a black screen with a white bar at the bottom of the screen. Looked like a progress bar. Rebooted again but same thing. Popped in the OS disc and tried a check desk and fdisk and it came up with some errors. Got to stage 4 of 5 on them and then stopped at 50% for hours.

So today I started it up again and it finally booted to the Windows logo and then finally to desktop. Took around 30mins to do so. Hard drive light indicator is always on for the most part and takes forever to load applications.

Okay, I guess my question is this about to be a hard drive failure? Never had one so clueless of what it is but would think it would have something to do with the hard drive. Also before it froze the other day, applications started being really slow. For example it took 10mins just for the save file dialog box to pop up to save a file.


Anyway, Thanks for the help and hopefully I can get this solved.
 
[Testing the Hard Drive]
Download the CD image of Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP/Vista install CD. Test the hard drive and see if any problems are found. DFT will run on most manufacturers' hard drives. Alternatively, you can use Seagate's SeaTools for DOS to test a Seagate or Maxtor drive. For a Western Digital drive, you could use Data Lifeguard Tools for DOS to test a Western Digital drive.

Sounds more like a corrupt OS though.
 
Either way I'd back your shit up now before you lose it as a precaution.
Could be a corrupt OS, it could be. If the drives are going bad lots of things could be corrupted.:eek:
 
Well I'm running the WD Tools at the moment to check for hard drive problems. Will reply back with the results later.
 
Got to 6 and half hours and the computer reset before it finished. Any ideas?
 
I would check the sticky and do all the diagnostics listed there.

How big is that drive? Data Lifeguard Tools shoudn't take 6.5 hours to run. Get Seatools and boot from it on CD and scan the drive for errors. maybe you have a bad controller, in which case your motherboard is possibly the culprit.
 
Sorry for the late reply, but I ran into issues. So I did what you said and looked in the sticky. Got theprograms on the cd tried it but still took a long time to do it. I tried the drive in a different computer with the cd and it went alot faster with 0 errors.

Now, when I put the hard drive back into the computer it was in for some reason it doesn't post. I've done what the sticky said about what to do in this situation. Cleared cmos, tried with one stick of ram and a video card, got beeps. Tried both dimm slots and both ram sticks individually, got beeps. Tried without video card, got beeps. Got no other video card to test , but I did put it in another computer and it worked fine. Also have no spare ram or a computer to test it in.

So now I took out the video card and ram, got beeps. Any ideas? Greatly appreciate for your help.

Specs:
p4 3.2ghz
s478 p4p800s-x mb
2x512mb ram ddr400
radeon 7200 agp
corsair 450vx
80gig wd hd ide

edit: If this helps Ialso ran memtest for 16 passes with 0 errors before this occured.
 
Since your RAM passed, and your hard drive passed in another machine, but is slow or your system crashes when it is in your PC, I would try a new motherboard next.

You did say you were running a barebones system for testing, right? Just one stick of RAM, onboard video only if possible, one hard drive, one cd drive. Take everything else out of the system. Reason being I've seen bad PCI cards cause a no boot situation.

If you have done all this, then I would look at replacing the motherboard, as it tends to be a pretty good fallback if everything else passes.
 
No offense but when your Pentium 4 machine fails I think that is God's way of saying its time for an upgrade. Seems like you are spending a ton of time trying to save most likely a motherboard that is just so old that the components are failing.
 
Standpoint said:
Since your RAM passed, and your hard drive passed in another machine, but is slow or your system crashes when it is in your PC, I would try a new motherboard next.

You did say you were running a barebones system for testing, right? Just one stick of RAM, onboard video only if possible, one hard drive, one cd drive. Take everything else out of the system. Reason being I've seen bad PCI cards cause a no boot situation.

If you have done all this, then I would look at replacing the motherboard, as it tends to be a pretty good fallback if everything else passes.
Click to expand...

Done all the above. I agree about it's time to upgrade which I am soon, but was hoping to pass this computer over to my parents for internet use. Looks like that isn't going to happen now. Thanks for the reply!


God this sucks when all I got is a ps3 to reply with, lol.
 
if you have a extra hd, just do a fresh install and see how it runs. also you need more ram on the machine.
 
If it's the mb try to find a cheap one somewhere and pass on as soon as you can.
 
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