HardDrive Question?

[SIRCOOKS]

my main drive i think is crashing, i always get the message that windows explorer has encountered a problem, and needs to restart , so i just ctrl alt del, and everything will disappear, and after 2 seconds everything will come back, shouldi buy a new drive and put it as my main drive, or what else can i do to see whatelse can be done?

[glockjs]

what makes u think its crashing?? is it makin noises or anything else out of ordinary? sounds more like a software prob. like a virus or somethin

[SIRCOOKS]

so what, should i just reformat...and run a virus scan

[glockjs]

run anti virus, ad aware, spybot, clean your registry then defragg and check for probs and see what happens after that

[SIRCOOKS]

cool, will do

[handyguy]

sounds like the Blaster Worm

[SIRCOOKS]

naw it isn't blaster, i know first hand what blaster is, i had to get rid of it for a lot people....what else do yall think

[JSB]

Try HDTune

HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following functions:

Benchmark: measures the performance
Info: shows detailed information
Health: checks the health status by using SMART
Error Scan: scans the surface for errors
Temperature display

I think most newer HDs employ SMART to some extent.

JSB

[DVD_Ripper]

run anti virus, ad aware, spybot, clean your registry then defragg and check for probs and see what happens after that

Anyone know of a good 'registry cleaner' I've done my own editing of the registry when needed but are there programs that will scan all proggies and then tell you all the superfolous entries in the registry that are not needed anymore?

[julio]

try registry checker works ok for me you get a few free uses then just reinstall it
http://www.tucows.com/preview/347684.html

[DVD_Ripper]

try registry checker works ok for me you get a few free uses then just reinstall it
http://www.tucows.com/preview/347684.html

Thanks .... checking 'em out now.

[Garibaldi]

Here's something you can do so that you can use your computer like normal and back up your files while trying to solve this problem. If worse comes to worse, you will probably end up reformatting your hdd, costing you all your data. What I would highly recommend doing is downloading either Slax Linux (150 MB) www.slax.org or Knoppix Linux (700 MB) www.knoppix.net . Both are live-cd versions of Linux that run completely from cd, all you have to do is pop in the cd at startup. It will auto detect all your settings so you are all set. Knoppix has quite a bit more software than Slax, hence the larger file size. But slax will still let you do multimedia, surf the web, office apps, and burning disks. This will let you access your hdd and burn any files you want to backup to a disk.

As far as trying to salvage your hdd, after you backup your files with either linux distro, it may just be easier to reformat. Before you reformat, try all the free spyware/adware programs that you can find, www.spychecker.com is a good site. Its not really worth it for you to buy spyware scanning software. I would also recommend Startup Inspector for Windows, found here:
http://www.spychecker.com/program/startupinspector.html
It will scan for all startup items and tell you what they are and if you need them. Also, you may want to consider using Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser in the future if you don't already. Firefox is much more secure and just overall better than IE, which is full of holes and very well could have been the cause of your problems. I hope this helps, I'm glad to help with any further questions!

[bazooka]

@Garibaldi

Why do you always recommend Linux when that does not fix the problem?

It is probably spyware.

[Garibaldi]

@Garibaldi

Why do you always recommend Linux when that does not fix the problem?

The reason is that I know how frustrating it can be to loose or come close to loosing your data. It can mean hours of work gone. Even though it doesn't fix the problem, having a way to backup your data could mean that you could just reformat.