Scary experience

[Dune]

I had a scary moment yesterday. TG froze while opening it from doubleclicking a tgd (no idea why). Everything was frozen, so I had no choice but to reboot. Then the boot stopped where the HD is being detected. Nothing moved... reboot again, stuck again. Tried getting into the BIOS... froze while trying to enter BIOS. At that time I had cold sweat running down my spine, especially since I have some speed work to do this week. Tried rebooting, hitting F8 and whatever possibilities where on the black starting screen.... to no avail.

Even cold reboot didn't work.

Opened the case, blew out some dust, fondled some wires, rebooted again........................... it's back  pfff

[freelancah]

I hope you have secured your backups Sounds to me like HD might have some issues

[Goms]

nice, i'm sure now i will have problems to get to sleep tonight...

[Zairyn Arsyn]

scary stuff indeed.
this wasn't on a SSD was it?

earlier this year i had my own scary experience when i thought one of my own SSD's "died"
i checked the efi bios and the drive was'nt appearing.
powered down, opened up the case & i plugged the sata cable into a different connector, booted it up, and it was working again.

[jaf]

I've had a similar experience.  Every now and then, my second SATA drive (D) would have a problem -- drive light always on and computer froze up.  Reboots don't work.  At first, I was convinced the drive was starting to fail.  But that was over two years ago.

I found if I reseated the data cable (or swapped it) the drive would work fine again after a chkdsk d:/f for many months.  Of course I back that drive up quite often.

[Dune]

I back up all the time, so that's no problem, to a loose drive and a second pc. But I'd hate having to get a new pc and get it all in again while I need to be working. Although a fresh installation is good now and again. And no, it wasn't an SSD. Having heard that they fail in the blink of an eye, I prefer the slow and agonizing death of the old drives 
It may have to do with the fact that I took the drive out while away for a few days, and failed to properly plug it in again. And all the dust...

Anyway, it's running fine now, but I never trust these machines 100%....

[Henry Blewer]

I bought a computer case which has a dust protector. Just open up the front every couple of weeks and wipe it off with a damp towel. My case is an Antec 300.

[Dune]

I have an antec 300 as well.

Just blew out loads of dust, but I still got a serious problem; both my online version and offline version of XP (on separate partitions) are suddenly much slower. Photoshop is reacting dangerously slow on anything I do, the cursor kind of trailing behind.... slow in updating display. Could it be a corrupt driver?
Starting up XP and some automatically starting progs is also suddenly slow. I set the BIOS back to default, checked for viruses, nothing helps. Any advice is badly needed!!

I find it strange that both XP versions are responding slow.. I'd think it has to do with the hard drive or BIOS. But I checked my HD with hddh(ealth) and it said 77% healthy.

Please help, as this is making me very insecure 

[yossam]

Dune, I have been experiencing the same symptoms with my Vista. It started about a week ago..............got me greatly concerned. I have done the same things that you have done without any success. It is not happening constantly, just at random times. If I find any information pertaining to this, I will let you know.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

i like antec's cases... i have a both a P180 & a P182 for my for my machines.
like the separate chamber design and the removable dust filters.

I bought a computer case which has a dust protector. Just open up the front every couple of weeks and wipe it off with a damp towel. My case is an Antec 300.

And no, it wasn't an SSD. Having heard that they fail in the blink of an eye, I prefer the slow and agonizing death of the old drives 

i think it was Efflux who convinced me to go with SSD.
all my important files are a regular SATA drive.

[Dune]

I found that I might have some missing dll's (CCCleaner told me). Repaired the lot, but to no avail.
I also find that rundll.exe won't stop when shutting down. I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del it every time.
The mouse/wacom pen responds very slow, so I installed the latest graphic drivers. To no avail.
And I find that a program (Mailwasher) starts up twice, where it should start up only once (which it says in msconfig). Strange and annoying.
And just now rundll.exe asked for permission to enter the internet, which it didn't before.
I tend to do a fresh install of XP (or a repair(?), but I'm not sure whether I also have to reinstall all progs after that. That would be a lot of work.

Any advice, guys?

[Henry Blewer]

Try Advanced System Care from IObit. It has a great great set of utilities which can check all types of computer issues. You'll need the full version, not the limited free version.

My guess would be that your drivers are corrupted. Also there may be bad HD sectors. Back up and try a deep format if the ASC does not work, then re-install the OS and stuff. I would recommend clean installs of the program software, not backed up version. The data should be safe to use.

[Kadri]

Did you tried a system restore Ulco?
Did you scanned the system full for viruses malware etc. ?
Scan disk for file system errors ?

Are your fans working ? Monitor the temperature of your system hardware.
Use the  S.M.A.R.T. feature of your HD. 
Try a tool like  Seatools  or other program and look if your HD has real damage or not.
Seatools is for Seagate drives but works on others too but be carefull .
Use other vendors software if they have maybe.

These are what comes to my mind at first to do before a more drastic format , reinstall etc.
I don't know HDD health but % 77 doesn't sound so good used along with a HD to me!

I hope this is a temporary loose cable etc. problem.
But there could be a serious problem lying before you Ulco (probably your HD dying).

[Dune]

Thanks guys. I tried several options, and Dr. Watson found some scratchdump (I believe) from TG. Probably remaining from the initial crash and forced reboot. So I deleted that, got rid of the virtual memory, defragged its drive, set it up again. Maybe that helps, as the memory may have been 'full'. I also did some HiJackThis scans, as well as a complete virusscan. I will also do memtest this evening.
Maybe some windows ini file is corrupted, as XP starts up very slow, and autostarting some apps takes much longer than usual and then start them up twice.

Good idea to try some other HD tester.

I wouldn't know what drivers to reinstall, if any might be corrupted. Sys info gives 'no problems'.

If all fails I'll pick a rainy day and do a clean install. Apps are all on a different partition anyway, so data is safe.

[Henry Blewer]

If you have a Windows Install disk, ask it to do a system repair. This will often find corrupted ini and dll's.