(I apologise in advance for the length of my post - in my experience it's best to be as detailed as possible when it comes to pc troubleshooting, so as to rule out as much as possible beforehand)
History: over the course of the past 2 months or so, our PC became increasingly slower - up to the point of freezing every few minutes and showing a stuttering cursor that looked pretty garbled. The Event Log showed a long list of errors, mostly PerfLoad and Kernel (I've forgotten the ID numbers, my apology). It didn't really look good overall, and after some searching around on the net for possible causes I decided I might as well start with some spring cleaning and do a format/clean install.
So I backed up all our files to an external HDD (fitted in a usb casing, 1TB), formatted D (internal hard drive, 2TB, secundary) and ran something to check it for issues (forgot what it was, but iirc it was in the system tools folder). I found I couldn't format C (internal hard drive, 300GB, primary) from DOS anymore (last time I performed all of this myself was when I was still a student and had a pc with XP) and found the onyl way to do so was through the Windows CD. Fine, then.
The next morning, which was last Thursday, I popped in the Windows CD and proceeded to format C (which I suspect was a quick format and not the thorough full data-wiping format I would've liked, because it literally took 5 seconds), after which I installed Windows 7 (full Home edition instead of the Ultimate edition we first had) and all necessary drivers on the CD that came with the motherboard. This took up all of my Thursday.
On Friday I started with a defrag and then continued to install Firefox, Microsoft Security Essentials, and the in-browser stuff like Flash/Shockwave/Java. I plugged in my external HDD, opened Explorer, clicked on one of the folders... and everything stopped responding and Explorer froze up. I couldn't stop Explorer through Task Manager, not even by 'go to process' and terminate that. To make sure my data wouldn't become corrupted, I quickly clicked 'remove hardware' and pulled out the cable of my HDD. To be on the safe side, I went to a friend's house and asked if I could plug in my HDD there and check it. I was able to access every file perfectly fine, there were no viruses or bad sectors or whatnot, nothing. So from what I gather, my HDD wasn't the culprit. Phew.
When I came back home and launched the computer, the issues I had before the format started again: the computer would freeze for several seconds, the cursor would stutter and look distorted, and sometimes the computer would freeze completely so I'd have to reboot (strangely enough, in about half those cases the cursor would still be able to move around - everything else just stopped responding, including ctrl-alt-del). I plugged in my HDD for another attempt, but no matter which port I tried, the pc refused to recognise it. Not even the little puh-dum sound to tell me it was aware of something being plugged in. Event Log again showed a few PerfLoad and Kernel warnings, although not as many as I'd get before the format/install. Great.
I went to search for possible causes, found several mentions of chkdsk and decided to run it. I entered 'chkdsk /f' in cmd and was told it'd run on startup. Sure, fine.
That was around 17:00 last Friday. I haven't been able to use my computer ever since.
The current situation is this: my computer is on, but I get no visuals - I switched from our HDMI screen to a VGA one, but it just gave the 'no VGA signal' message and went to sleep. This means that I can't check if chkdsk is still running or whether it has frozen.
The sounds coming from the pc sound similar to when it's idle. No churning, no grinding, nothing. On the upside, no Crunchy or Clicky Sounds of Death.
At the front there's a blue led burning bright and uninterrupted (when there's processes running it blinks or stutters, so I assume this is the hard drive). Inside the pc there's a row of tiny red lights on the motherboard burning bright and uninterrupted. At the back there's a yellowgreen light blinking, which the boyfriend says is the network card.
For the rest, nothing.
I'm afraid to force stop chkdsk, because I've read in several places that it's something you most definitely should NOT do. And besides, it won't solve anything, since it'll just start all over as soon as I boot up again. Sod that.
However, not stopping chkdsk means I won't be able to use my computer for sod knows how long - I've read about it taking up to 2,5 weeks in one particular case. I can't go without a pc for that long, I've got stuff to do. Besides, if chkdsk has indeed frozen then I could very well wait till hell freezes over and still not see a change.
So now I find myself in an impasse. I could simply consider the hard drive deceased, forcibly shut down the pc by pulling the power out, remove C and insert a newly bought one, and just install the lot again. However. Should the problem turn out to be not the hard drive, but the motherboard, then we won't be able to buy a motherboard. The current state of our wallet limits us to either a new hard drive or a new motherboard, but not both. So I need a way to determine which of the two it is BEFORE we buy either one.
I found various lists of symptoms of a dying hard drive, but a lot of the things listed aren't happening. No funny crunchy/clicking/unusual noises, no missing or corrupted files (at least, none that I'm aware of), only the freezing during simple stuff like browsing FF or Explorer. The boyfriend was able to play BF3 an entire evening without any issues whatsoever, which we decided rules out the video card. The boyfriend is inclined towards laying blame on the hard drive, because he says it's already 7-8 years old. Quite frankly though, to me that doesn't necessarily mean that's the issue. It might very well be the motherboard instead. But I can't test it without forcibly terminating chkdsk, which might fry our hard drive. Urgh.
I spent the past weekend searching for advice on what to do, but I can't find a solution that suits my particular issue. Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
~Marlous.
History: over the course of the past 2 months or so, our PC became increasingly slower - up to the point of freezing every few minutes and showing a stuttering cursor that looked pretty garbled. The Event Log showed a long list of errors, mostly PerfLoad and Kernel (I've forgotten the ID numbers, my apology). It didn't really look good overall, and after some searching around on the net for possible causes I decided I might as well start with some spring cleaning and do a format/clean install.
So I backed up all our files to an external HDD (fitted in a usb casing, 1TB), formatted D (internal hard drive, 2TB, secundary) and ran something to check it for issues (forgot what it was, but iirc it was in the system tools folder). I found I couldn't format C (internal hard drive, 300GB, primary) from DOS anymore (last time I performed all of this myself was when I was still a student and had a pc with XP) and found the onyl way to do so was through the Windows CD. Fine, then.
The next morning, which was last Thursday, I popped in the Windows CD and proceeded to format C (which I suspect was a quick format and not the thorough full data-wiping format I would've liked, because it literally took 5 seconds), after which I installed Windows 7 (full Home edition instead of the Ultimate edition we first had) and all necessary drivers on the CD that came with the motherboard. This took up all of my Thursday.
On Friday I started with a defrag and then continued to install Firefox, Microsoft Security Essentials, and the in-browser stuff like Flash/Shockwave/Java. I plugged in my external HDD, opened Explorer, clicked on one of the folders... and everything stopped responding and Explorer froze up. I couldn't stop Explorer through Task Manager, not even by 'go to process' and terminate that. To make sure my data wouldn't become corrupted, I quickly clicked 'remove hardware' and pulled out the cable of my HDD. To be on the safe side, I went to a friend's house and asked if I could plug in my HDD there and check it. I was able to access every file perfectly fine, there were no viruses or bad sectors or whatnot, nothing. So from what I gather, my HDD wasn't the culprit. Phew.
When I came back home and launched the computer, the issues I had before the format started again: the computer would freeze for several seconds, the cursor would stutter and look distorted, and sometimes the computer would freeze completely so I'd have to reboot (strangely enough, in about half those cases the cursor would still be able to move around - everything else just stopped responding, including ctrl-alt-del). I plugged in my HDD for another attempt, but no matter which port I tried, the pc refused to recognise it. Not even the little puh-dum sound to tell me it was aware of something being plugged in. Event Log again showed a few PerfLoad and Kernel warnings, although not as many as I'd get before the format/install. Great.
I went to search for possible causes, found several mentions of chkdsk and decided to run it. I entered 'chkdsk /f' in cmd and was told it'd run on startup. Sure, fine.
That was around 17:00 last Friday. I haven't been able to use my computer ever since.
The current situation is this: my computer is on, but I get no visuals - I switched from our HDMI screen to a VGA one, but it just gave the 'no VGA signal' message and went to sleep. This means that I can't check if chkdsk is still running or whether it has frozen.
The sounds coming from the pc sound similar to when it's idle. No churning, no grinding, nothing. On the upside, no Crunchy or Clicky Sounds of Death.
At the front there's a blue led burning bright and uninterrupted (when there's processes running it blinks or stutters, so I assume this is the hard drive). Inside the pc there's a row of tiny red lights on the motherboard burning bright and uninterrupted. At the back there's a yellowgreen light blinking, which the boyfriend says is the network card.
For the rest, nothing.
I'm afraid to force stop chkdsk, because I've read in several places that it's something you most definitely should NOT do. And besides, it won't solve anything, since it'll just start all over as soon as I boot up again. Sod that.
However, not stopping chkdsk means I won't be able to use my computer for sod knows how long - I've read about it taking up to 2,5 weeks in one particular case. I can't go without a pc for that long, I've got stuff to do. Besides, if chkdsk has indeed frozen then I could very well wait till hell freezes over and still not see a change.
So now I find myself in an impasse. I could simply consider the hard drive deceased, forcibly shut down the pc by pulling the power out, remove C and insert a newly bought one, and just install the lot again. However. Should the problem turn out to be not the hard drive, but the motherboard, then we won't be able to buy a motherboard. The current state of our wallet limits us to either a new hard drive or a new motherboard, but not both. So I need a way to determine which of the two it is BEFORE we buy either one.
I found various lists of symptoms of a dying hard drive, but a lot of the things listed aren't happening. No funny crunchy/clicking/unusual noises, no missing or corrupted files (at least, none that I'm aware of), only the freezing during simple stuff like browsing FF or Explorer. The boyfriend was able to play BF3 an entire evening without any issues whatsoever, which we decided rules out the video card. The boyfriend is inclined towards laying blame on the hard drive, because he says it's already 7-8 years old. Quite frankly though, to me that doesn't necessarily mean that's the issue. It might very well be the motherboard instead. But I can't test it without forcibly terminating chkdsk, which might fry our hard drive. Urgh.
I spent the past weekend searching for advice on what to do, but I can't find a solution that suits my particular issue. Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
~Marlous.
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