[question] Could My Hard Drive Be Bad?

hey,

in the last year i have had problems with my icons, explorer crashing randomly, AIM connects whenever it wants to, i get some blue screen that rambles on about an memory dump then my computer shuts down, i cant even play games anymore!

so could my problem be that my 2 year old 20gb samsung hard drive is just giving out? thats 2 and a half years of countless reformatted windows! i was thinking about getting a SATA RAId Drive, are they any good?

question 2: the blue screen where it says memory dump then shuts off my pc, could that be because i only have 256mb of ddr ram? should i get more, or will that not fix the problem?

question 3 - i have a ton of weird .exe files running in my task manager, is there a one program that will scan for trojans and spyware that would be found in the task list? i have norton and adaware but i scanned and updated them and no viruses came up

i seem to be losing my computer, recently i tried to overburn a large file to a disk and fried my cd-rw drive. it no longer can write things to disks, so making a backup of my hard drive will prove to be difficult

thanks in advance,

Pops

#204188

whens the last time you tried to reinstall windows?

also run memtest86, see if your RAM is bad.

#204203

Also, this can hapen if the model of ram chip you have

doesnt work with your mobo. THat hapened to me

Dont get a new hard drive. They wont give out after two

years no matter how many times you reinstall windows

unless its been bumped or droped or something. I have

some hard drives that are 15 years old and have 40 MB

and they still run perfectly

#204282

well tell the computer not to turn off. go to system properties (winkey+pause) and go to the advanced tab. then go to startup and recovery and tell it not to automatically restart. that will make the bsod (blue screen of death) stay on so you can write down the stuff it says. post it here and maybe we can help you better as it does a memory dump no matter what the BSOD is caused from. i hope we can help you.

EDIT: download a trial of AVG 7.0 from grisoft.com (and crack it if you want :naughty: ) and tel it to do a complete scan. its the best virus scanner imo even better than norton and mcaffee combined.

#204395

ok im going to do memtest 86, i just turned off the automatic restart. i will let you know of what happens the next time things go buggy

Also, i think i have the cool web search virus. tried removal but still doenst work. my home page still sends me to home search about:blank instead of Aqua-soft

#204409

ok i did memtest 86, all is good with the memory. i used a ton of removal tools to get rid of the spyware but no luck. my mainpage is still about:blank

now whatever is in my system is spreading and attacking Kazaa lite and Download Accelerator Plus. both apps shut down after i double click on them.

it seems that i am at a loss and after my CD-RW drive burnt out i cant make a backup if i wanted to reformat my pc. so if there is any program out there or any more help you can offer i would be very grateful.

(AVG 7 was a 10 mb Download and i didnt have time t0 get it omy my 56k connection, i will try though)

thank you

#204585

well i use avg 7 and it is worth the download. believe me. btw the automatically restart option tell it to display the bsod until you hit the power button on your computer and as i said all bsods do a memory dump so whats really important is the code that goes like 0xblahblahblah which can we can search for to find the problem.

EDIT: use firefox. coolwebsearch doesn't attack it.

#204588

Reinstall windows without a format (it will be very simmilar to a fresh install but everything that was there will not be deleted), backup your stuff, then reformat-reinstall. easy as keca.

#204602

and what may i ask is keca?

#204616

Originally posted by TheBigB@Aug 20 2004, 04:25 AM

and what may i ask is keca?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

cake spelled backwardsdown

#204644

ok i will see what i can do, thanks for all your help

#204712

Originally posted by lostspyder@Aug 20 2004, 02:44 AM

cake spelled backwardsdown

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

and what may i ask is backwardsdown? :canadian:

#204739

Originally posted by TheBigB@Aug 20 2004, 02:23 PM

and what may i ask is backwardsdown? :canadian:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thats where the word is frontsidewards then you flip it around.

#204823

ok why is everyone confusing me?

#204879

ok i had another BSOD and it said the problem is coming from win32k.sys, does that help diagnose the problem, is there like a patch or a fix for it?

#205026

http://forums.devhardware.com/archive/t-25235

This chap came to the conclusion there was something wrong with his ram. Go buy some more and see what happens.

#206509

i had a bsod a few times from win32k.sys. reinstall windows w/o reformatting.

#206591