General System Instability When Accessing Hard Drive?
Jan 23, 2013
This December just been I got a 2Tb hard drive, a stock standard Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm. I have noticed in recent weeks, that when I access this drive, perhaps to copy files, read them, rename them, import files to it, download files to it, etc, etc etc, it causes some pretty shocking instability in my opinion. Programs at random will stop responding, as I type this, skype randomly froze while I was chatting to a friend, and it took 5 minutes to get it to close and restart. On top of this, windows explorer just loses it, it will hang to the point I cant even access task manager, file transfers will crawl along, and random explorer windows will briefly freeze. A corrupted windows install? Corrupted files? Any ideas? I will re-install windows if absolutely necessary, however if its a matter of corrupted files, the files are almost entirely irreplaceable, I would need a way to single out the problematic files and remove them, so I need a method to do this?
I have a desktop (Using it right now) with a hard drive, 7 etc etc and everything works fine. I am however having issues accessing a hard drive from an old lap top I used to own. It was sold, but I kept the hard drive. This was a while ago so I can't remember its OS, but I'm pretty sure it was XP but possibly vista. I have plugged it into one of my towers extra hard drive spots in hopes of being able to retrieve some old pictures from it.This is my problem: After reboot, it got a message saying the usual installing device driver software thing, after that... nothing. I look in my computer and no new drive showed up.
My old computer was put to rest with a big power surge last week. I had to buy a new computer and now I would like to access my old files. I have taken the hard drive out of my old PC. My new PC of course has windows 7. I am not a computer expert but I am not a novice either. The old hard drive has the sata connection and I have a sata cable, but have never used one previously. I connected the cable to the old hard drive and then plugged in the power cord to the wall outlet. I then I connected the USB cable from the sata cable connected to my old drive to my new PC�s USB port. I haven't been able to access the files on the old drive but I know my new pc has recognized the hardware. After I connected the USB cable to my new pc under Devices I can see a hardware named USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge. Not sure what that means. There is �No� drive listed for it though when I open Windows Explorer. I can only see the (OS) C drive and the HP Recovery D drive.
I had two hard drives in a Windows 7 system. One had the operating system and the other was for storage. The storage drive is a a 2 TB drive. I am not sure what format was selected on the hard drive. If this information is needed, I can do so with guidance how to find this information. The 2 TB has a lot of data. The drive was removed. Later the main drive with the operating was formatted, and the 2 TB drive was put back into the computer, but new Windows 7 does not recognize the drive.
I am not sure if Windows 7 updates have been run, so maybe this is a driver issue? I tried to access the drive through Linux, and Linux showed the drive as empty. I am wondering if some weird security feature was enabled? If so, is there any easy way to get the data back? In windows 7 under devise manager, the drives shows up, but I can only see the devise name. I also tried accessing the drive in external case in a Mac Lion System, and could not get the drive to open up.
my computer was unable to access the restore feature hidden on the harddrive on a separate partition. I used the diskpart feature in windows dos prompt to make the restore partition active. Upon bootup, the Gateway restore program comes up automatically and it states it cannot run (memory error). For now, I'd like to just put back the previous partition which was active, but I can't get into the DOS prompt. I made a DOS reboot disk in FAT32, but it doesn't give me access to my harddrive nor does it have the dispart program.Any way to get DOS to work without windows and making this change?
i have been on various forums for advice but unable to solve - this is the problem -
* it turns on & I CAN get into advanced menus * it will not repair itself no matter what * it will not go into any other modes , safe Etc....therefore I cannot restore to factory settings etc.... * ive Tried all tricks such as F8, Alt & F11 etc..... to get into advanced menu settings - all lead to the black screen * everything i click on enter leads to a black screen - only a white curser appears.
its as if there is no way of accessing the computer disc/ hard drive in anyway from boot up. there is clearly a hardware problem but i cannot access anything internal beyond ordinary & advanced menus i just keep being led to the black screen & no activity. the menus work & that is all. i run Windows 7 on a Dell inspiron 1564.
I built a new computer setup and have been having frequent crashing, hanging and freezing problems. At one point I had the odd BSOD but as of late no BSOD's just freezing up. I have attempted full reinstall of the OS, checked all updates, drivers, firmwares, bios setttings etc and still am plagued by this very frequent problem. Have also tried installing and uninstalling SP1 and the recently released MS hotfix for freezing issues with no improvement. [code]
I have noticed lately that Windows Media Player has become a bit, choppy, a bit laggy. When playing videos, fraps reports a decent fps, and the actual video file is at a fps which will easily display as smooth, however I can clearly see choppy video. When this happens, other dynamic elements also become choppy, such as the windows animation displayed when moving files, or moving temperature graphs. Perhaps it is a video driver? Or something similar? Either way, the system should be easily able to keep up with the load.
So, I have a i7 2600K system with a solid state disk as the boot drive, and an older (c2008) Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB drive as the data drive for programs (that I deem as not worthy of the quick load times). The hard drive has given me some errors over time, and I bought a hard disk to replace it (a Hitachi 1TB). The issue I'm having is that the fact that Windows 7 puts a small (100MB) partition on the F3, and for some reason, even though I'm running Acronis 2012, it doesn't seem to be able to clone the F3 over to the Hitachi. I've also tried Drive XML, and for my 2 hour wait, I only managed to acquire a boot error. Thankfully, I've not done anything rash to destroy the data on the F3, but given the fact that I've seen corrupted files in Steam from that drive, I'm not will to trust it long term with my data. I really need to get the data onto that Hitachi, though... Anyone have any advice for upgrading the HDD in a SSD/HDD system? I don't really feel like it should be so hard, especially if I've bought Acronis True Image, but maybe they haven't designed their product to handle this scenario quite yet?
If the System is not able to create System restore point try to Create the restore point manually. If you are unable to create a system restore point manually then you could try these steps.
I have a WIN -7 system with 1 trig SADA hard drive. I also have a Vista system with a 750mb hard drive from my old computer.Can I install the Vista hard drive into the Win-7 system and boot from either system?
I did some work on my system yesterday and I removed my DVD/RW drive along with some cable management. Now that you can buy alot of software online and install it without the need for an optical drive, is one even needed anymore?
I have an external DVD/RW (USB2) that I occasionally use with my netbook. Can I use that to install Windows and other software that I still have a disk for (3 or 4 programs)? I'll also use it to burn ISO's (Linux) should I need to.
I have installed newly a windows 7 in my pc that it eaither have windows 8 installed in when i boot manage screen is showing only os that i can see is windows 7,i already installed easybcd but it also do not show me windows 8 and actually i do not can boot my windows 8 and use it what can i do?
i have a (spinning) hard-drive with my windows 7system and data on it. it is up to date to this month. the hard-drive is a 320gb. there is jsut 69gb used on the 320gb.i just bought a 256 gb SSD (solid state HD). i would like to place everything on the 256 and put IT in my laptop. i have saved a system image of the 320gb on DVD. windows seems to want an exact size (320gb) to restore the system to.
My primary system drive where Windows 7 is installed is a: WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD3200AAKS HD 320G - OEM. Long version (feel free to scroll down to short version): Yesterday, I came back to my computer, and all of my applications and desktop were frozen, but I could move the mouse. When I clicked on a window, the cursor would turn to the blue spinning thing, and the window would eventually say not responding and turn a lighter shade of white. I couldn't click on the desktop of the start menu, so I did a hard reset. The computer then wouldn't pass the black "starting windows" screen. I did another hard reset, and it asked me if I wanted windows to try to repair start up. Soon after that, it asked if I wanted to restore windows, but when I clicked OK, I got what looked to me to be a memory error. Then startup repair seemed to do nothing for a few hours, till I got impatient and restarted the computer. I was able to get into Windows, and I scheduled a memory test, and reset the computer. Memory test ran and found no problems. I restarted and Windows loaded, but soon after my computer was laggy and the programs were freezing. So then I thought it may be a HDD issue, so I scheduled to run check disk on that drive, and reset. Check Disk found corrupt files and bad sectors. After that, I was able to load Windows normally, but when I tried to open MC7 for "Live TV", it wouldn't pass the searching for tuner stage, so I closed out MC7, and got an error message in the action center. So I ran chkdsk again. This time, windows wouldn't load after restart, so I went back into repair startup, and it seemed to have found the error really fast, restarted and everything seemed fine. I decided to run chkdsk one more time for good measure, and it had a couple more read errors and found more bad sectors. Now I have been running windows with no apparent issues yet.Short version, computer froze, ended up running chkdsk 3 times, had to repair start up, and now everything is OK for now, but obviously I'm worried about more harddrive failure. Here are my questions:
1)How troubling is this? Do I need a new harddrive ASAP, or can it run for years with a few bad sectors? Any further tests I could run?
2)If I am to get a new system drive, what should I get? All I have on it is windows and my programs. I have separate disks for data. I'm using roughly 32 GBs out of 298. Should I just try to get the same drive (same speed, same capacity), or is there a good upgrade and is it worth getting an upgrade (I don't need more space, but something that would help performance maybe?) or any good deals on sale now?
3) I bought my current (failing) HDD on 9/24/2008, and I'm pretty sure WD has 5 year limited warranty. Should I peruse that angle?
4)How should I got about moving/restoring this OS to the new drive?
4a) I have a half dozen Windows Image Backups saved. Should I just use an old one from before the failure, or should I try to create a new one now, even though the disk may be corrupt?
4b)Or is there a better program to be using than Windows backup and restore?
When I access a certain folder in my hard disk, after 2-5 seconds I get a dialog box saying "windows explorer has stopped working" and I get two options "check online" and "restart windows explorer" then I copied that folder to another destination and I could access it but the following days the new destination also started giving the same problem. I used tools like "scan disk" and "defragmentation" but nothing worked. I use Windows 7 64 bit unlimited.
im looking to get new harddrive and was wondering isit possible to copy whole os to new hdd?
meaning like copy whole os to new hdd so i dont have to reinstall all my programs because im going to use my current hdd as external storage using caddy and my new hdd as my sole drive
ive been told theres some program called ghost something that does it,,is this true or even possible
Assuming the hard drive for my last (XP) system wasn't the part that failed, I'd like to find some way to use it in my new computer. The old hard drive has an expensive program on it that I need for work, and the program either won't work at all or wont work without an upgrade according to the supplier when I asked why I can't run the program using Windows 7. Is it possible to install it in the new case and run the XP based programs?
I am a photographer and I am always growing my storage. I have 8 slots in my computer, and I basically want to fill it up with extra HDs. I already have my OS setup finished. But I have random hard drives lying around. I would like to set them up as one drive with a parity... and then replace them as I get bigger better hard drives. Can someone point me in the right way?
I currently have windows vista 32 bit on my hard drive. I want to upgrade to windows 7 ultimate, but don't want to format this HD just yet.
Is there a way to load windows 7 onto this hard drive then have that portion of the HD boot up in windows 7? That way I can run windows 7 and still have my windows vista and all my files on the same hard drive.
If windows 7 works out, can I delete that windows vista portion and copy the files into the Windows 7 portion?
My laptop was stolen recently. However, I was lucky to have a back up (old, really old) that I can use to recover at least some of my data.I now have a new laptop and I restored the backup on it. However, I created a user name different from the two that are on the backup. If I now create the two users, will they automatically be linked to the files that were restored? Alternatively, is there a way to link all files to the new username?
So I've been using my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit install on my Sony AR670 laptop for a couple months straight now with no real issues but this one that started last week with no apparent cause and is getting very annoying.The system 'hangs' or 'freezes' in a way when I do certain things like create a new file/folder or select a file from a 'browse' file box, especially say when I upload a file to a forum, like this one, using the "Manage Attachments" option... I use Chrome but this happens even in Windows so I'm sure it's not Chrome related... it has something to do with file access is my guess.During the 'hang' I can still move the mouse and scroll windows but I can't press buttons, open menus, or issue any 'commands' if I do I get the windows 'alert' sound and nothing happens. The length of time of the 'hang' varies from a couple seconds to maybe 15 seconds or so when really bad.Because it's so hard to describe exactly I haven't had much luck searching for a similar problem.It also happens when renaming or moving files... The file will seem to revert back to its original name for a few seconds during which time I can't really do anything. If I try to rename it or move it again I get a message the file no longer exists then it will change to the name I gave it the first time.
I have setup some monitoring software in an XP Virtual Application. More specifically I used the "Virtual Applications: The 'Invisible' Third Mode" method described here.
My challenge is that I need to access the applications database file, and save it to a location on the host computer. It seems to me that the only way to save files from the Virtual Application is through the program itself, and because the program hasn't been designed to save the database file (e.g.: there is no "File - Save DB" command) I am stuck.
If I had setup a Virtual Machine and then installed the software into it I would have the advantage of being able to access the guest file system, however I would not have been able to start my monitoring software whenever a user logs onto the computer.
Is there any way of accessing the host system of a Virtual Application?
I came into the possession of a new HP computer, the hard drive has no operating system on it. Is there any way of putting windows XP or Vista on this system without going out and buying them. Are there any operating systems online that can be downloaded?
My hard drive is slowing down the preformace of my computer. The hard drive gets a 5.9 rating in windows 7 performance ratings. I would like to switch out to a newer hard drive possibly Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX. I do have an external backup drive
So, i woke up the other day to see my Windows 7 computer is now completely screwed up that i am on right now..C drive is Mirror RAIDed to let you know.It is reporting 74.1MB free of 465GB total on the drive.No matter what i delete, it does NOT EVER free up space.As a matter of fact, some files delete, then come right back, files i've added myself.. weird #1Two, i run chkdsk in windows, it says C drive is a RAW drive and cant scan however it boots up fine to it every time. weird #2So i then use windows repair command prompt to chkdsk /F /R It sees it's NTFS JUST FINE..but reports ZERO errors.. weird #3I scan using Intel Matrix Storage Console in windows, NO ERRORS, weird #4But i am getting Disk I/O errors like crazy in windows logs and in programs, etc.. weird #5I selected all files on Disk C- total space in use under 300gb, but showing 465GB in use.. weird #6Scanned for infections with AVG, no errors, i tried malwarebytes, will not open- 0xc000005. weird #7So i have a drive that can't be read but is read but reporting wrong size but measures right size that has no errors but has errors.
I am stack at certain process while trying to load a system image onto new hard drive using Windows 7 x64 image restore function from the windows 7 disk, I got my primary drive 500 gigs with windows 7 and all my files,I made a system image onto another clean internal hard drive size 160 gigs and I was successful, now I disconnected my 500 gigs primary hard drive, attached a new 250 gig hard drive and I proceeded to load the system image, I boot to windows 7 cd,I get the option to repair , click on restore from system image file , everything looks good computer finds the hard drive 160 gigs with the system image as source,I press next look for the target drive and I see it there 250 gigs drive thats freshly formatted ..., I select the target press next it all looks good and then I get the screen that there is no target hard drive... I made sure that this hard drive is not being excluded from format and new process... I am lost ... what am I doing wrong here, I reformatted those 2 drives twice I tried this operation about 8 times , I get the error message each time I am attempting to create this new system image..
I am not very good with computers, so I don't really know how to do this, and need explanation in simple english. My hard drive is constantly causing BSODs on my HP laptop (Windows 7) and I have ordered a new hard drive. I am not quite sure how to transfer the operating system.
and i got problem with my brothers WD external hard drive, it's not recognized in my computer, my brother says "it lost the drive letter or may be some files broken" he had some knowledge about that but we can't fix that one.
Here's the deal: I've bought a new 1.5TB hard drive for my PC to replace the 320GB one in there at the moment (turning it into a HTPC). Problem is, it's one of those mini-tower PCs and it only has the one hard drive slot. This means it's re-installation time!
So the question is, what do you lot think would be the best way of setting up Windows 7 on this new drive, hopefully keeping as much as possible of my current setup? As far as I can work out, my options are as follows:Use the Windows Backup thing to do a complete PC backup, installing Windows on the new hard drive, then restoring the system from the backup. Use a Linux live CD and use Partimage to create an image of the system partition which I can then put on the new hard drive and hope it boots (obviously once the MBR is sorted, etc). Just install Windows on the new hard drive and set everything up again from scratch. The hard drive arrives in 2 days, so what do you reckon?
