hard drive problem

TRDCorolla1

Golden Master
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California
I was just at my coworkers house today doing a couple of hardware upgrades (RAM and DVD RW drive). I also want to do a scandisk and a defrag, but that's where something strange started to happen. I would run scandisk and it would appear to be doing fine with the bar moving up, then all of a sudden, it goes back to the very beginning (right when it was scanning the allocation table). Same thing with the disk defrag. It got up to 2%, then back down to 0%, never finishing it. Weird. What do you think is the problem without reformatting? The OS was Windows ME.
 
It could be other tasks running on the computer messing with it... my moms used to do it... try closing all tasks running... temporarily disable all virus stuff and other things in your icon tray

EDIT-- if you want to keep the progress on the screen... disable screen shutoff and also screen savers via the control panel... because as the guy below points out... even touching the mouse could mess it up
 
Oh yes, that thing. When you defrag, you must close ALL programs running and NOT touching the computer...not even the mouse.
 
Sorry about that other thread. It seems like after I hit the "Post Thread" button, it hangs for what seems like minutes, then gives me that Fatal Error message. So I tried sending again, and it says there was a duplicate thread. Well, I checked the forum to see if it did post it, and it did not. So I repost it again and went through. So strange. This isn't the first time it's been doing that. Are any of you having this problem too?

I gave that a try, disabling most items in the startup tray. Now, its saying there are errors on the hard drive and won't defragment. SO I attempted Scandisk again and the same problem exist where it wouldn't seem to scan. It was someone else's PC and boy was it slow. The last time it was defraged was like 263 days ago. I got rid of half the startup programs and want to keep the rest because it was vital to the system and the person want certain programs to load at startup. I'm going to double check the Processes again and boot into Safe Mode to do the scandisk and defrag tomorrow. It's a tough problem.
 
How old is the HD? i know after a while if you dont keep up with it or if youve got a virus or have bad sectors that it will be a pain... the indication of Windows ME tells me that this thing is probably a bit behind the power curve
 
She got the PC in 2001. The HD is only 20GB, but she's only used up 6GB so there's still plenty of space on it. Perhaps after 5 years, it's exhibiting signs of problems. But the funny thing is, everything works perfectly. Her PC rarely shut down and restart or gave constant errors. It works just as you expect from Windows OS. She said it works fine, but a bit slow. The computer isn't a powerhouse PC but used just for word processing and internet.
 
My word certainly isnt gold, but i would save pertinent files, reformat, and reinstall everything... of course my patience level is very low
 
That solution was in the back of my mind too. A lot of work, which I'm not about to do right now :p

She's not paying me enough for the job, lol.
 
Defrag it and got to sleep once it started. It needs no activity to be ran in order to defrag completely.
 
But the problem is it's not defragging. Every time I would do it, an error pops up saying the drive has errors and cannot defrag. I tried scanning it with scandisk and it doesn't complete the scan. The progres bar goes up, then keeps going back to the beginning again over and over again. Other than that, it works fine.
 
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