Netbook Issue

[jdude]

Is it possible for portions of a hard drive to die? Recently I was using my netbook and I noticed it wasn't charging when it was plugged in. After I plugged in a different charger it started to charge again. I thought maybe my when my charger died it had an electrical surge or something along those lines which may have affected my netbook. When I got home I noticed that the videos I usually watch every night (about 50 gb of random funny shows) was starting to slow like the computer was having issues loading them. I restarted the PC and when I clicked the start button the hard drive would click relatively loudly (I never noticed the clicking before) about 2x per second at a constant rate and either the start button would take 3 mins to load, or it just wouldn't load. I went into safe mode and removed a bunch of startup programs, my temporary files and gave it another try. Now the start button takes a little while, but it opens up. There's no odd looking processes running in the background and I was using an up to date windows xp sp3 and AVG anti virus.

 

The computer seems to run at a very minimal level now. when I open a video player and try and play a video it sometimes plays 2 seconds then locks up other times it just locks up. When I do a virus scan, sometimes opening AVG causes it to lock up, sometimes it will lock up in the middle of a scan.

 

I've had this netbook 3 years and I think the coincidence of it having issues when the power chord broke is not a relationship to ignore. I've kept okay care of it, I never did great maintenance on it like I do with my desktop, but it's also never had a virus or any issue because it's just used for note taking and internet browsing.

 

So is it possible that part of the hard drive has been damaged by a surge from the power chord? I could reinstall windows XP but I don't know when I'll have the time to. It seems to be running a lot louder than I ever remember it being. Btw I managed to get all my important documents off the computer.

[nbohr1more]

Mechanical Hard Drives can be in a state of partial failure, yes.

 

I would use a hard-drive testing utility to be sure or even the S.M.A.R.T. test in your BIOS (if it has one) but the symptoms you've described seem pretty clear to me...

 

AVG has been in decline for over a year and have been known to include backdoor software to boost their search and advertising profile. I would remove AVG ans install Avast (hopefully Avast won't also run out of funds from us free-loaders and start pulling stunts like AVG )...

[jdude]

You're saying AVG is incapacitating my computer????

[Serpentine]

If you're getting clicking, it's most likely spinning up and down due to physical damage, they can cause general performance to suffer greatly as it spams hardware interrupts like crazy. If this is the case you're most likely killing the drive and chances of recovering stuff at a later stage.

 

If there's no clicking from it, it could be that your drive has gone into PIO mode due to Windows being dumb, this usually only happens on XP. If a drive drops to PIO you will get stuttered sound and a really slow and sluggish, unresponsive machine. You have to reset it by removing the IDE channel that the drive is using in device manager so that it redetects, in Vista and later iirc they have fixed this problem.

 

Living in a place with terrible power I can tell you that power issues can damage the hell out of both desktop and laptop drivers, UPS and regulated powerblocks help a bit, but most of the time while the fuse will blow there's a good chance that drives have taken damage even if the rest of the system is 100%

[jdude]

If you're getting clicking, it's most likely spinning up and down due to physical damage, they can cause general performance to suffer greatly as it spams hardware interrupts like crazy. If this is the case you're most likely killing the drive and chances of recovering stuff at a later stage.

 

If there's no clicking from it, it could be that your drive has gone into PIO mode due to Windows being dumb, this usually only happens on XP. If a drive drops to PIO you will get stuttered sound and a really slow and sluggish, unresponsive machine. You have to reset it by removing the IDE channel that the drive is using in device manager so that it redetects, in Vista and later iirc they have fixed this problem.

 

Living in a place with terrible power I can tell you that power issues can damage the hell out of both desktop and laptop drivers, UPS and regulated powerblocks help a bit, but most of the time while the fuse will blow there's a good chance that drives have taken damage even if the rest of the system is 100%

 

This sounds like the most likely case. I thought maybe it was a virus, but the coincidence of it all happening within 24 hours of the power chord dieing out is so strong I don't think I'm going to bother even doing a scan.

 

I've taken all my important data off the computer and my older laptop (4ish years) is quieter than it, so as a reference the netbook is definitely louder than it should be. Thanks for the info I'll take it apart and see if I can find a replacement HD somewhere. If it's too much money I may just leave it.

[jdude]

I did a disk check (that start up disk check) and apparently there's damaged in the AVG directory as well as the recovery files. It got to a snapshot file within the recovery files and stopped working, after an hour I just gave up, that HD is done.

[Serpentine]

I did a disk check (that start up disk check) and apparently there's damaged in the AVG directory as well as the recovery files. It got to a snapshot file within the recovery files and stopped working, after an hour I just gave up, that HD is done.

 

I've just reinstalled a friends laptop as her drive took a turn for the worse after being dropped from table height, good times. Got another 2.5" drive her from a girl across the path, mechanical damage is the best... all that clicking and heat mmm.

 

In short : seems everyones storage is dying in a fire.

[nbohr1more]

After re-reading my post I see that it was unclear.

 

Part one was me coming to the conclusion that your Hard Drive is having physical problems.

 

Part two was me ranting about the decline of AVG.

 

AVG wouldn't cause hard drive problems but could cause OS stability issues (unless they've improved since the last time I installed AVG...). I just don't trust AVG anymore...

[jdude]

Eh whatever, I switched to Avast anyways lol

[nbohr1more]

Good.

 

I hope Avast stays afloat, I don't want to have to install AOL for free McAfee (cure worse than the symptom)

[rich_is_bored]

I might be in the minority here but I don't even bother with an anti-virus program anymore. I think it's a legacy application from back when floppy disks were the preferred medium of transmission.

[jdude]

I've considered just doing away with one with windows 7, but decided against it. My Windows XP experiences showed me I need one, but SP3 I haven't had one single issue with.

 

Every once and a while I'll stumble across a Trojan from a random website (usually when googling mp3 downloads, too lazy to bit torrent). A friend of mine challenged me when I first got windows 7 to get a virus, and I did managed to contact a Trojan

 

But the threats out there today pale in comparison to what I used to deal with a couple years ago. I remember getting a couple virsuses that required complete formats; now I haven't had that happen since SP3 on xp. If you do nothing more than browse the same old websites over and over, word process / watch movies / play retail games then I don't think there's any reason to have AV, but I always end up ollowing links or downloading apps into the no man lands of the internet. (Not porn related)

 

*Disjointed sentences due to exhaustion.

[Tels]

I've considered just doing away with one with windows 7, but decided against it. My Windows XP experiences showed me I need one, but SP3 I haven't had one single issue with.

 

Every once and a while I'll stumble across a Trojan from a random website (usually when googling mp3 downloads, too lazy to bit torrent). A friend of mine challenged me when I first got windows 7 to get a virus, and I did managed to contact a Trojan

 

But the threats out there today pale in comparison to what I used to deal with a couple years ago. I remember getting a couple virsuses that required complete formats; now I haven't had that happen since SP3 on xp. If you do nothing more than browse the same old websites over and over, word process / watch movies / play retail games then I don't think there's any reason to have AV, but I always end up ollowing links or downloading apps into the no man lands of the internet. (Not porn related)

 

*Disjointed sentences due to exhaustion.

 

The problems with running windows (esp. xp sp3) and god-forbig IE, is that you don't need to do anything special to contract a trojan. Just surf the net normally, run across an embedded-rogue advert and *bam* you are done. I have to deal with that stuff at work, so trust me, you don't need to do anything other special than just opening, say the website of "The WallStreet Journal" one fine morning and come back rooted...

 

So having an AV as a second line of defense sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately, the AV track records to actually detecting new stuff is very very poor - and for the victim it doesn't help if "his" trojan is detected 3 days later... and since the AV stuff uses up ungodly resources, it might even be a worse cure than the illness.

 

ATM your best bet is to not use windows, followed by "don't use IE, ever", followed by "run the browser in a VM", followed "at least patch your system and clean it up afterwards". All of them aren't really solutions if you just want to browse, tho...

[rich_is_bored]

I just keep the data that I can't live without on removable storage and leave the system to get hosed. I don't particularly enjoy wiping a system and starting from scratch but I'm mindful of what I do and how I do it. I haven't had an issue that's required a complete re-installation for years.

[New Horizon]

I was just skimming through the post. Did you end up replacing your hard drive? My friend Dan was having some rather serious issues with his hard drive a few months ago too. It started with his computer giving him an error about a missing file when he tried to boot. So I reinstalled windows...then his boot up time was ridiculously long. It would take 2 minutes to get into windows xp, and the laptop was only 2 years old. I reformatted again and installed a fresh version of xp....same results, which seemed odd. So, I went one step further and downloaded a reformatting utility that wrote 0's to the entire hard drive...I mean it blasted the sucker clean. After doing that, everything was brilliantly fast. No more than ten seconds to get into the OS. He's still using the computer months later with no issues. I'm not sure what had happened to the drive that a reformat alone wouldn't fix it, but it certainly goes to show that reformatting isn't as complete a fix as it should be.

[jdude]

I'm fairly sure it's physical damage. I've had no errors just very bizarre computer activity. I guess I could give a reformat a go but I can't fully format it because it's an Acer and it has the windows partition hotwired into it I've never been able to format an Acer drive properly..

[Bikerdude]

use Gparted or same such

[nbohr1more]

You might also need to change a BIOS setting that has locked that partition...

[LEGION]

Just a quick question for virus-stuff: How to erase 'hidden drivers' that hide possible malicious stuff? I seem to have such a thing because my Windows-update can´t connect. Also I got very often these damn pages popping up after I opened something new. Not side-related, it even happens after I opened the forums here. (I posted a list with these sites in a thread while ago)

 

Recently I let Ad-aware and Avira Anti-Vir over my disk during Save-mode (in German: Abgesicherter Modus), the thing you select (F8 during boot) to just start windows with needed stuff, but nothing was to be found. Oh, btw, I have WinXP SP3 32-bit. (Last win-update I think was in April/June)

[Serpentine]

I'd recommend getting ERD Commander if you're using XP, try find the latest version, you'll most likely have to torrent it as Microsoft stopped offering it for download Get the latest Autoruns and Kaspersky's KAV too, throw those on a flash stick (you might want to run and unpack KAV somewhere then copy the unpacked version to the drive).

 

Burn ERD to a CD, plug in the flash stick with the other stuff. Restart and boot off the ERD CD/DVD, attach to your install of XP. Run the KAV tool and let it scan everything in detail, it's a handy if slow tool so give it some time.

 

If it doesnt find anything and you're sure its a driver, you should then be able to manage/delete/disable drivers in the normal driver manager, its in the start menu somewhere. Also run Autoruns and make sure its not left other random things lying around, use the version that you downloaded not the ERD version which doesn't show much.

 

There used to be some guy that repackaged NOD32 to a stand alone version for running like this, but he seems to just redirect to the ESET site now

[Tels]

Just a quick question for virus-stuff: How to erase 'hidden drivers' that hide possible malicious stuff? I seem to have such a thing because my Windows-update can´t connect. Also I got very often these damn pages popping up after I opened something new. Not side-related, it even happens after I opened the forums here. (I posted a list with these sites in a thread while ago)

 

Recently I let Ad-aware and Avira Anti-Vir over my disk during Save-mode (in German: Abgesicherter Modus), the thing you select (F8 during boot) to just start windows with needed stuff, but nothing was to be found. Oh, btw, I have WinXP SP3 32-bit. (Last win-update I think was in April/June)

 

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppicillin would help, but it looks you can only get the "with virus scanner" version from the issue 2/10 of the German c't which came out in Februar 2010 - and hence might be hard to get. Oh well, such a nice concept, and it is totally unusable for the user...

 

Maybe you can find something similiar? See: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363533,00.asp

[LEGION]

Thank you, Serpentine & Tels for your feedback. I´ll try one of these in the next days, first I have to decide which one first.

While Antivir took five hours I can reckon with a lot of hours for my 465GB (237GB free) HardDrive, just to get Windows-Update working again, I´m sure some of you think that I´m better off without it...

[lost_soul]

Well the other day I heard some unnatural noises coming from my GPU fan in my laptop. I had been playing Tremulous for a few hours and the GPU was at 76 degrees C. This is unusual, because Trem is such an old game with low requirements. Obviously it was dirty. I cleaned it out with a friend's vacuum and now it runs cooler and quieter. Hopefully the fan wasn't/isn't failing. You know how it is... any time you say "I think I fixed it!", tomorrow it will have the same symptoms again. This is the machine I rely on for TDM, but everything else I do/play can be done on the older spare machines around here.

 

I actually thought I killed the laptop at first, because after vacuuming it, the fan didn't spin at all. I guess this is normal, because it kicked on when I raised the temperature by running some games.

Edited October 22, 2010 by lost_soul