[DUG] [DUG-OFFTOPIC] Windows troubleshooting

[John Bird]

Thanks for that....it turns out there are a number of errors in the event
log this morning to do with the hard disk and bad blocks...it is still
running and I think its time for extra urgent backups!

I didn't realise Windows XP would hide such errors away....

I am guessing they only surfaced (no pun intended) cos I tried to defragment
the volume...

I use DriveSnapshot for backups (disk image to exernal disk)...I wonder if
anyone reckons its better to do that before or after doing a surface scan
with CHKDSK etc?

John


I had a very similar problem on my work computer once, and it turned out it
was a corrupted/damaged hard drive. The HD was thrashing as windows was
running Scandisk behind the sceens, and other things would take ages as it
would attempt to reread data from the HD (Which sometimes worked on my
machine, and some times did not).
 
If this is what is causeing your problem you should see errors on your
system event log with somthing about bad sectors.
 
Regards
Ben Vaughan