Hard Drive Help

[TJ]

Folks,

The last few days I have noticed an ocasional pinging like noise coming from the PC. I now find the PC is hanging when the screen saver has come on I can get the mouse to move but it's proving almost imposible to get any programs to run. If I power it down and restart the PC seems to restart as normal.

I am not able to get explorer to open properly either.

So could it be my hard drive about to pack in? The only thing I have done recently is fit a new graphics card but that's about a month ago.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

T

 

[davedyer]

I think that as long as there is a possibility your HDD may be on the way out, now's the time to get it replaced or backed up onto another.

They're so cheap - a 500GB external HDD at PC World for about £70 - it will be worth avoiding all the hassle of loosing everything off your old one.

If it turns out to not be the HDD, at least you've got everything in place for when it is.

 

[mikepg]

I think that as long as there is a possibility your HDD may be on the way out, now's the time to get it replaced or backed up onto another.

They're so cheap - a 500GB external HDD at PC World for about £70 - it will be worth avoiding all the hassle of loosing everything off your old one.

If it turns out to not be the HDD, at least you've got everything in place for when it is.

 

[andyclift]

They're so cheap - a 500GB external HDD at PC World for about £70

If your hard drive is on the way out an external one won't help you much. The good news is that an internal drive only costs about half.

If you think it may be a drive problem go to My Computer, right click on the disk icon and select Properties. Now select the Tools tab and select error checking.Click on Check Now and tick the Repair Bad Sectors option and Start. Takes a while. If bad sectors are found it's not a big problem as most discs have some but it may be a indication that you should be thinking about changing the drive. This problem does not sound like it's drive related though.

I would be looking at the latest mod. ie. the graphics card. I would check that I have the latest drivers on the makers website and then reinstall the drivers.

Final thought, why bother with a screen saver? These date back to the days when CRT monitors suffered from screen burning so they provided a screen where every pixel was constantly changed It's not a problem on modern screens and I have noticed that a lot of screen savers don't even change every pixel, they just give a pretty picture.

 

[TJ]

If your hard drive is on the way out an external one won't help you much. The good news is that an internal drive only costs about half.

If you think it may be a drive problem go to My Computer, right click on the disk icon and select Properties. Now select the Tools tab and select error checking.Click on Check Now and tick the Repair Bad Sectors option and Start. Takes a while. If bad sectors are found it's not a big problem as most discs have some but it may be a indication that you should be thinking about changing the drive. This problem does not sound like it's drive related though.

I would be looking at the latest mod. ie. the graphics card. I would check that I have the latest drivers on the makers website and then reinstall the drivers.

Final thought, why bother with a screen saver? These date back to the days when CRT monitors suffered from screen burning so they provided a screen where every pixel was constantly changed It's not a problem on modern screens and I have noticed that a lot of screen savers don't even change every pixel, they just give a pretty picture.

Thanks Andy

I have run Chkdisk and result comes bad NO bad sectors. I have done the drivers for the Graphics card, so me thinks it's more like the hard drive, saying that it's not even two years old, but there again maybe not the best on the market.

As for the screen saver I haven't changed it from when I had a CRT monitor, but will do.

Cheers

T