PC won't boot up, hard drive making strange noise HELP PLEASE!

[Guest]

I am running win XP pro, everything was fine until I tried to print a word
document, it prints to a printer connected to another computer and routes
through the DSL modem/router. At that point everything locked up and the hard
drive went into this rythmic clicking. clickety-clickety-clickety-click over
and over. When I try to boot up windows starts and and right at the end of
the process, just before it should be finished it starts that same rythmic
clicking and everything is locked up, no mouse no keys, I have to unplug and
reboot. It WILL boot in safe mode, I have gone into MSCONFIG and unchecked
everything in the start tab but no help. I have run ad-aware scan found many
(80 some) spywear. deleted those, no help. Am running defrag now. Hard drive
is almost full, had to delete some programs and files to even run defrag.

ANy ideas, please help. I have a project deadline to meet and the work is on
that PC, I'm on a different PC now.

Thanks! Steve

 

[Guest]

Update: Defrag stops too, the system locks up and that same rythmic clicking
starts. Please help.

 

[Bob I]

You have the sounds of a failing harddrive.

Update: Defrag stops too, the system locks up and that same rythmic clicking
starts. Please help.

:

 

[Guest]

Damn, not good news. is there antything I can try to find out? It boots in
safe mode with networking and I can access some of my files from my other PC
but there is a lot of info on that PC that I need keep.

Any ideas?

 

[Bob I]

Copy off what you can, and quick!

Damn, not good news. is there antything I can try to find out? It boots in
safe mode with networking and I can access some of my files from my other PC
but there is a lot of info on that PC that I need keep.

Any ideas?

:

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your help but I would liketo get another opinion, I think its
hanging up on corrupt data. It happend when I tried to print and when it
boots up in normal mode the printer icon is still in the task bar so its
trying to load or finish the print job or something. I can't seem to delete
the print job in safe mode however.

Any ideas?

 

[Mike Robinson]

Thanks for your help but I would liketo get another opinion, I think its
hanging up on corrupt data. It happend when I tried to print and when it
boots up in normal mode the printer icon is still in the task bar so its
trying to load or finish the print job or something. I can't seem to
delete
the print job in safe mode however.

No its your harddrive failing. Backup everything now and take it to a
computer shop.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Thanks for your help but I would liketo get another opinion,

My opinion is the same as Bob's. If your drive starts making
strange sounds, it may be failing. Corrupt data doesn't cause the
drive to make strange sounds.

Whether you believe Bob or me doesn't matter. Neither of us can
hear the drive and be sure, of course, but there's at least a
good chance that the drive is failing, and it's prudent to be
sure you have a backup of anything you can't afford to lose.

 

[Guest]

Oh yeah, and the more you do to an already strained drive, the higher the
chance of data loss. You might want to just stop tinkering and get it to a
shop for data recovery before you lose it all...

 

[Steve N.]

Thanks for your help but I would liketo get another opinion, I think its
hanging up on corrupt data.

No, the sound you hear is the read/write heads re-trying to read a bad
area of the disk. It is a physical defect that has developed. You could
run chkdsk /r to try and flag the bad sectors as unusable but when a
drive starts incessant clicking like that it's almost always too far
gone to do anything except backup your stuff and replace it. Even if you
marked sectors bad using chkdsk /r (or a manufacturer's utility) it is
very likely more will develop.

It happend when I tried to print and when it
boots up in normal mode the printer icon is still in the task bar so its
trying to load or finish the print job or something. I can't seem to delete
the print job in safe mode however.

Any ideas?

Sorry, Bob is right. The printing issue is coincidental.

Steve

 

[Ron Martell]

Update: Defrag stops too, the system locks up and that same rythmic clicking
starts. Please help.

You need to take *innediate* action to backup/protect your data.

The more you run the computer the greater the likelihood that the
drive will die completely, leaving you with no means of recovery
except by using a high-priced data recovery service, and their prices
are often quoted in thousands of dollars.

The best available utility for overcoming this sort of problem is
Spinrite from Gibson Research (www.grc.com). This *might* do some
good, if the actual problem is a defective/damaged area of the data
surfaces and if further damage is not being done to the surfaces.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Logan K. Boop]

No, the sound you hear is the read/write heads re-trying to read a bad
area of the disk. It is a physical defect that has developed. You could
run chkdsk /r to try and flag the bad sectors as unusable but when a
drive starts incessant clicking like that it's almost always too far
gone to do anything except backup your stuff and replace it. Even if you
marked sectors bad using chkdsk /r (or a manufacturer's utility) it is
very likely more will develop.



Sorry, Bob is right. The printing issue is coincidental.

Steve

You have suffered what used to be called a head crash i.e. the
read/write heads have latterly crashed into the platter in a read write
attempt. Reason for this doesn't matter.

1 Is this fixable and should the hard be trusted in the future?

It is fixable by running Chkdsk. As afars trusting the drive; I
would give to my 16 year old son for playing game but would I trust it
to store data on which my career and lively depend with NO BACK Up hard
drive. I think that would be an extremely poor choice to say the least.
From the sound of your frustration it appears as if you have no backup
what so ever.

2. Is there anyway to save anything? Yes there is, first run CHKDSK its
not necessary to attempt to set options it will set it's own options
when it reboots. It will attempt to read every cluster on the hard drive
if it fails on the first attempt it will make 5 more attempts (I think
its 5 but it's a bunch)to read that cluster. A well functioning modern
hard drive should see NO MORE THAN 10 BAD CLUSTERS and that's only
after it has been in service along time. Windows XP will attempt to
read the data from any defective clusters. Any data will be moved to
another area of the hard drive and the original clusters are marked as
bad and are never written to again, UNLESS YOU REFORMAT THE DRIVE and
the process must be repeated. When the default number of retries has
expired the cluster is marked as bad.

3. Get another hard drive if this really important data. Reinstall all
operating software and copy any user files and you are ready to go.

4. CAN THIS DRIVE BE TRUSTED? Not with anything important. IF and
that's a big if the computer experienced a power line dip that caused
this problem or something of that nature I would say do what we have
outlined here and continue to use it. That would mean reload operating
system and what ever else it takes. You have not indicated any such
condition just something out of the blue kind of struck. We have no
explanation we can not trust it.

 

[Richard Urban]

If you have important "can NOT afford to lose" files on that hard drive -
turn off the computer NOW - this second.

Sit back and consider your options. If you just have drive corruption
(doesn't sound like it) you can recover files with one of many file recovery
programs. If the drive is going bad, doing this may send it over the edge.
You can also remove the drive and send it to Drive Savers or OnTrack (data
recovery firms). Note that this option is NOT inexpensive. In fact, it's
very damn expensive. But you will get back any files that have not already
been destroyed.

Good luck!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew half as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!