BIG problem with booting. In need of help!

[dwellufool]

Heyo CF, i've come across a problem with my hard drive.
After nearly a year of running smoothly it looks like my hard drive has finally crapped out or something.

The problem I face is that instead of the normal 3-5 minutes it takes to start and log on the computer and have my browser up, i've hit some benchmark that makes it take 4+ hours.

I know it's just this hard drive, I used other ones to test it and it works fine.

It's a 1tb Western Digital Cavier Green (I think it's cavier)

2.2ghz intel, 4gb RAM.

Wondering what my best course of action is, reinstall Windows or some other fancy thing. Any info appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[iPwn]

Does it take 4+ hours to boot into Safe Mode too?

 

[arsenalbates]

Yes as InfectionZero said try and boot into safe mode, if this seems like its back to the normal speed then it may be some program or service causing the slow boot. I think this is unlikely however its worth a try.

Its either the hard drive itself or its something that has gone wrong within the software.

When you have booted in is it taking ages to for example load up your documents or is accessing this like normal. you could check the processes on the task manager to see what may be using the recourses.

If it comes to it then you may need to do a recovery of the system files, this means you wont loose all your personal data but instead it will replace those files that the system needs to function. you could also try a system restore to a date that the computer was working. And maybe a virus scan.

 

[dwellufool]

Looks like safe mode works fine for booting up, I remember trying to reinstall windows a while ago in safe mode, but couldn't because of some restriction on doing something like that with vista.

My computer, even when everything is loaded (which takes a while) will start to run smoothly for a bit, and then sink back down to the point where I'm back to 5-10 minute load times to open a file.

I'll try the two ideas you had, though I've tried a system restore in the past and it didn't do much.

If all of this fails, I honestly have no problem wiping the hard drive clean if needed. All I have on their are games and some old video files from my film class.

 

[iPwn]

So you can install Windows on the same drive without losing all of your Data. Boot from the CD and it install Windows. It will take the contents of your c: drive and put them in a Windows.old folder.

Obviously though, a usb backup and clean format would be optimal.

 

[dwellufool]

It looks like it hid the old files in my program files, but still kept the space on the hard drive. However, some of the programs stayed on the computer so I didn't need to reinstall them.

Long story short, it worked!

Thanks Infection and Arsenal!

 

[arsenalbates]

Glad to hear that,