Hard drive or hardware failure??

[havoc]

I've had this same reoccuring problem since around december when it started......Basically my computer slowed up in december i pulled the plug and restarted.. ran fine.. then again froze i pulled the plug and my comp starts loading and then bam it shuts off at the window's xp logo and then restarts.. goes to a screen saying windows shut down unexpectedly etc etc.. start in safe mode, safe mode networks etc ....start at last good config or start window's normally.. click any of those and the same thing happens.. gets to the logo and shuts down.... This has happened about 4 times now since then and all of them have resulted in me having to reinstall window's...Everything works fine for awhile and then bam the same thing ends up happening again....Is this something i'm picking up virus related or am i just getting a hardware or hard drive failure that is going to eventually not start back up at all?

Thanks for your help

[DaChew]

I chased a similar problem on a computer and replaced several components over the span of a couple of years, the power supply and memory was poor quality, but windows or some installed programs kept crashing. After reloading that computer 3 or 4 times I downloaded a disk check utility from the manufacturer of the hard drive, after exhausing all windows checks, the utility found a few bad sectors in what I assume was the system file area. I had been slow formatting the hard drive between window installs. Sometimes a hard drive dies slowly.

[havoc]

I chased a similar problem on a computer and replaced several components over the span of a couple of years, the power supply and memory was poor quality, but windows or some installed programs kept crashing. After reloading that computer 3 or 4 times I downloaded a disk check utility from the manufacturer of the hard drive, after exhausing all windows checks, the utility found a few bad sectors in what I assume was the system file area. I had been slow formatting the hard drive between window installs. Sometimes a hard drive dies slowly.

An update to this......It is now starting to do the restart thing at least one time a day or so now.. Usually its when i first turn the computer on for the day.. It restarts and I pick out the last known good config option and it starts fine then.. restarts are fine it just seems to be the first time during the day. I'm assuming its just hard drive dying slowly as you said above.. anyone else that has any input would be appreciated

[novabortion]

An update to this......It is now starting to do the restart thing at least one time a day or so now.. Usually its when i first turn the computer on for the day.. It restarts and I pick out the last known good config option and it starts fine then.. restarts are fine it just seems to be the first time during the day. I'm assuming its just hard drive dying slowly as you said above.. anyone else that has any input would be appreciated

Hello, ive had these problems before with hard drives and sometimes it can be a bad sector on the hard drive. Windows can do a check disk and move or repair bad sectors (i think) something like that. This is what i do and works most of the time. You have to take out the hard drive and connect it to another windows pc, the easiest way for this is buy an sata/ide adapter to usb you that can get on newegg or frys for about 20-30bucks. (just turns your hd into an external drive). Once you have the drive in another cpu you have to open command promt (type cmd in run box) then a little black window will open and in there just type "chkdsk x:/r" and x would be the new drive letter of the hd you just connected. This process may take hours depending size of hd. This scans the whole hd and i think moves the bad sector or skips over them, then you can reinstall windows after that and should be fine. Sorry for such a long response but i have trouble explaining things lol. If you need any help let me know.

[Raid]

An update to this......It is now starting to do the restart thing at least one time a day or so now.. Usually its when i first turn the computer on for the day.. It restarts and I pick out the last known good config option and it starts fine then.. restarts are fine it just seems to be the first time during the day. I'm assuming its just hard drive dying slowly as you said above.. anyone else that has any input would be appreciated

That actually sounds like a failing power supply. If the current drops below a certain level, the computer will do a hard restart. (as if you pressed reset or powered it on). If you have one, I'd put a multimeter on the power supply while starting up the computer. If the voltage drops below 10 volts or so on the 12volt rail, it'll probably make your PC restart.

[havoc]

That actually sounds like a failing power supply. If the current drops below a certain level, the computer will do a hard restart. (as if you pressed reset or powered it on). If you have one, I'd put a multimeter on the power supply while starting up the computer. If the voltage drops below 10 volts or so on the 12volt rail, it'll probably make your PC restart.

Would that explain why it started after the computer basically froze while i was looking around online? Thats when the whole thing started doing it.. it will work fine for about 20 or 30 days and then start doing the same thing again.. and again today same thing happened i turned computer on restart at the xp logo and then i hit last known good config and it started just fine.. worked all day yesterday no problem and even did a few restarts no problem....Not saying your wrong by any means just making sure that would do that even after i get it started and do any restarts. And unfortunately i'm not sure if i have a mutimeter anywhere around here or ill try that if i find one.

Thanks for the help I'm also going to probalby try to do the harddrive check for bad sectors as well if i can get to another computer to use it.

[Firefox]

If you have a good UPS, with software that lets you monitor the power going into your computer it may help you to see if maybe you are getting dirty power from the outlet. If voltage drops below a certain level the computers power supply will think it lost power. APC has good software that will let you monitor a UPS. I use mine to determine power surges and brown outs.