How to confirm I have a hard drive issue?

[destms]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 (1.5 yrs old) and it started radomly freezing up every 10-15 mins or so. It's literally locked up – can’t move mouse, can't ctrl-alt-del, etc... Only way to turn off is a hard shut down (holding power button for 5+ seconds). I run check disk from windows and it gets to step 5 of 5 but stops on the same file every time (14% done). Can run chkdsk from DOS and it doesn't find any issues (seems very odd). I tried restoring to factory condition, started downloading the microsoft updates (it's obviously way behind so has to catch up) and it got stuck part way through one of the updates and now won't reboot.

I think I need to get a new hard drive (~$50-80) but before I do, what can I do to confirm 100% I need a new hard drive?

[Doc C]

Sure sounds like it. If you have access to another machine and can download and burn one, you can try the UBCD. It's got some good apps.

[satis]

Yea, before going out and buying a new hard drive I'd try getting a real Windows cd (vista or xp), boot from it and reinstall Windows that way. Most 'restore' disks don't actually reinstall Windows. Sometimes a repartition and format can do wonders.

The symptoms you report could be a failing hard drive. Unfortunately, it could also be other things, including just a goofed up Windows install. So I'd start with a reinstall from boot cd. If it locks up during that (because it'll definitely take more than 15 minutes) then you know it's not Windows and it's some sort of hardware issue. When you repartition, i'd recommend doing the full format... if I'm not mistaken that rolls bad sector checking into it so if it's just a bad part of the drive it should be noticed and fixed.

If it still locks, i'd lean more toward it being bad RAM, but it's hard to say. You're not getting any visual artifacts or anything, right?

[YvetteKuhns]

if I'm not mistaken that rolls bad sector checking into it so if it's just a bad part of the drive it should be noticed and fixed.

Yeah, I had a hard drive that found bad sectors when using the software to reformat and partition the hard drive before planning to make a clean installation of Windows.

When a computer freezes up, I usually suspect bad RAM or not enough RAM.

I run check disk from windows and it gets to step 5 of 5 but stops on the same file every time (14% done)

This sounds suspicious. Even if you remove the file, you may get stuck on another file. That does sound like a bad sector on a drive, but the hard drive may still be okay to use if not one of the important sectors where your OS is stored.

It is possible to make your current hard drive the slave of another hard drive, if you have a friend that could do that and scan for problems on your drive BEFORE reformatting. Your computer can freeze if you installed too many programs and you are maxing your RAM or something. One of my clients did that. His family installed tons of stuff, so I made his drive the slave of mine to scan for viruses and remove unnecessary programs. He has been using that same computer and drive for years and I didn't have to reformat his drive!

[Dbrazzell]

http://www.memtest86.com/

Its an iso that you burn to a CD. Its bootable so you boot from this cd and it runs a program that stresses the ram a bunch. Then it can report if there are any problems. Usually you want to leave it running for a while since there are cases where ram will be fine for a few hours but then after being stressed for some time will start to error out.

Just one more tool you should add to your toolbox.

[geekworx]

Could be bad RAM or overheating. Open up case and make sure heatsink is clean and fans are all working.

[satis]

Nice link Dbrazzell. That would've been really handy a couple months ago when I was troubleshooting a memory issue on one of my PCs. :p