Think HDD may have failed - interpretation of symptoms help wanted!

[mb_1]

Hi all,

I would be very grateful for some interpretation of the symptoms my desktop pc has. A couple of days ago it started 'pausing' during normal usage. By which I mean it became unresponsive to inputs, including Ctrl+Alt+Del. Whenever this happened, the HDD activity light was on solidly.

The systems quickly became unusabe and when I rebooted it said Windows was 'unable to start' and did a 'Startup Repair'. This seemed to improve the problem briefly, but it quickly came back. I then booted from the Windows 7 CD and scheduled a bootup CHKDSK to run. This seemed to get stuck on Stage 4 of 5 and was unable to complete.

From my googling, I'm not entirely sure whether this might still be software related or not? CHKDSK hanging seems to occur under various conditions and I'm not sure HDD failure would give these symptoms.

I haven't knowingly changed anything on the PC recently. Could this even be a virus?
Could this be memory related? The Windows memory diagnostics passed okay.

Thanks in advance!

Details are:
Windows 7 64bit.
1x 500GB Seagate SATA boot drive
1x 120GB WD drive (old, not boot drive)
avast! free antivirus

 

[almartin]

If CHKDSK/F could not run all the way then I would agree with you that the HDD is/or has failed. It is possibile that you have a virus but if you can't access it you can not check it. The only thing you can try is to re-format from the command prompt.