This PC will be the death of me!

tonymadge · Post by **tonymadge** » 17 Nov 2006, 15:59

it loads fine in safe mode. I was about to buy a new portable hard drive but dont have to as der wife had got one for christmas so I will be opening it soon

petermcleland · Post by **petermcleland** » 17 Nov 2006, 18:50

Tony,

In BootVis go Trace > Optimise System...allow it to reboot in its own time...When rebooted WAIT till the Optimising window finishes doing its work and vanishes.

tonymadge · Post by **tonymadge** » 17 Nov 2006, 19:10

Thanks for the tip Peter I will try that. At present I am copying all my files from my 2nd hard drive to a new portable hard drive. I am begining suspect this 2nd hard drive for the following reasons, a while back I have afolder on thsi drive that I cannot open unless I use Explorer, then recently as all my other posts I have had an error message when I tried to do a disk analyse, then today the pc froze the mouse and keyboard would not work and a re-boot was the only cure, now this happened whilst I was looking at the hard drive via "my computer" So I am copying the hard drive over to the portable then will format nd see what happens??

petermcleland · Post by **petermcleland** » 17 Nov 2006, 22:32

tonymadge wrote:So I am copying the hard drive over to the portable then will format nd see what happens??

Try to run CHKDSK on that drive to isolate any bad sectors then those sectors will be avoided when you put stuff back on it.

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 17 Nov 2006, 22:40

Tony,

I did wonder if the disk was the problem - that was in fact the problem with my PC when it started slowly - the disk controller was having difficulty seeing it.

Depending how old the disk is, it may still be under warranty. I would suggest running the manufacturer's test program anyway to see if it picks up any faults. Sometimes it offers the option to rewrite the disk which can fix problems.

Despite Peter's comment, I wouldn't be happy just using CHKDSK to mark off bad sectors. If it is going bad, storage is pretty cheap these days rather than risking your data.

Ian

petermcleland · Post by **petermcleland** » 17 Nov 2006, 23:18

Yes,

I agree with Ian on that point...You can get huge drives for only a little money these days :think:

tonymadge · Post by **tonymadge** » 18 Nov 2006, 08:59

Well chaps many thanks for all this useful info, I transferred all of the hard drive contents last night plus I mad a copy of all my FS9 (60gb!) so that if I need to reinstall FS9 I can copy back all the data anyway after hours of this I formatted and cleaned the drive. started up this morning and it was all back to normal no big delays and no searching of the 2nd hard drive like before. I think I will replace it in the near future as it looks like the prime suspect in this. I will see what happens next time I fire it up if it works a few times then I am happy I caught it

speedbird591 · Post by **speedbird591** » 18 Nov 2006, 09:31

I've been following this thread carefully. Not because I have anything knowledgeable to add but for purely selfish reasons. I haven't had a lot of spare time recently and have to be quite selective about adding new aircraft and flying in FS. Tony has been doing so many incredible HJG repaints and site updates that I have a huge shopping list of new and re-downloads from HJG. And I've only just finished my DM upgrades :roll:

So, sympathetic though I am, Tony, I can't say that the respite wasn't welcome to me

Perhaps you should put your feet up now for a while and treat yourself to a well-earned break!

Seriously, though - I hope it's finally solved. Will your wife now have to find you another christmas present?

Ian

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 18 Nov 2006, 10:46

Tony

Do try the manufacturer's diagnostics - if they show all is ok (at a much lower level than a format) then that should put your mind at rest.

The tests can take a few hours but they are not destructive, ie the data does not get erased.

The files normally are available as an ISO which you burn to a (rewritable) CD and then boot from it.

Ian

tonymadge · Post by **tonymadge** » 19 Nov 2006, 09:26

2 days of stability and normal boots! I can go back to painting now Ian

Thanks chaps for all your help on this.