Could A Dying Hard Drive Cause Problems With Google And Other Weird Problems?

[lostinisaan]

Hello and Swasdee khrap,

I've just posted another thread that my hard drive's dying soon. A DELL Inspiron 1440). Now I've backed my drive C up, and save all other files I need, as I've got most of them also on my PC.

I've just recently read that other posters had issues with Google. My question is: Could the hard drive be the problem? When I click on Google it seems to open the webpage, but then disappears again.

Did anybody else just recently experience problems with Google? Even when I delete Google Chrome, it won't let me do a new set up, tried an offline set up that worked, but only for a few days.

Any input will be deeply appreciated.

Thank in advance.

[NeverSure]

What operating system do you have? You may be able to make an image of your drive and a recovery disk/USB stick.

Do you have an external drive with room for an image of your "failing disk?"

It doesn't sound like hard disk to me if google is your only problem. What else caused you to think hard disk?

[lostinisaan]

What operating system do you have? You may be able to make an image of your drive and a recovery disk/USB stick.

Do you have an external drive with room for an image of your "failing disk?"

It doesn't sound like hard disk to me if google is your only problem. What else caused you to think hard disk?

As in another thread described, the hard drive seems to have some problems, bad sectors. I've just backed drive c up, by using Acronis True image 2014.

But I couldn't back it up before, telling me that there're reading problems.

I'm running W 7, the 32 bit version and have never experienced such a problem with Google before.

Thanks, for any advice, you're the man....

[SOTIRIOS]

....more likely:

-Internet connection/service

- A Trojan

[astral]

Try Hard Disk Sentinal it will tell you the state of your disk

either allaying or confirming your suspicions

There is a trial version.

Also I think there may be a problem with W7 at the moment (I run the 64bit version)

Programmes can take for ever to load

but after a reboot all is well, for a while.

[writeshack]

Google Chrome has a known issue with using hibernate or sleep with Windows. Is this what you are doing? If so, try restart, preferred, or re-install Chrome. I hope it is that simple, good luck.

[Garnethoyes]

...., bad sectors. I've just backed drive c up, by using Acronis True image 2014.

But I couldn't back it up before, telling me that there're reading problems.

If you are getting bad sector read messages that sounds like the HDD is on the blink. Of course could be a virus (have you scanned from an external boot device?) but I've never heard of one doing that. High probability that this is a hard disk problem.

[solstan]

If you run internet explorer 11 on windows 7, try to downgrade to IE10 or use chrome, IE11 sometimes hang hard.

There are also brand new updates to both java and flash, and some of them are really needed.

Also check for plugins that are AD-driven ... disable them and life will be a lot better

[JeffreyO]

You can attempt to repair bad sectors using chkdsk. In order to run this click 'start' and type the word 'command' in the search field. Click on 'command prompt'. Once you have done this enter the following into the black dos window

chkdsk /f /r

This will attempt to repair any bad sectors it finds. If you complete this, we can see the log and tell you what the status of your drive is.

[MediaWatcher]

NeverSure, on 21 Oct 2014 - 13:51, said:

What operating system do you have? You may be able to make an image of your drive and a recovery disk/USB stick.

Do you have an external drive with room for an image of your "failing disk?"

It doesn't sound like hard disk to me if google is your only problem. What else caused you to think hard disk?

He mentioned drive "C", so is windows, it doesn't matter what version. If the HDD is failing making an image could also image the corrupt data... best thing is to replace the HDD and reload the OS, after all they are cheap, this gives a clean OS, after which he can load all his software, drivers etc, then his backed up files...then make an image. Making an image of a stable HDD/SSD should be considered essential

[lostinisaan]

Try Hard Disk Sentinal it will tell you the state of your disk

either allaying or confirming your suspicions

There is a trial version.

Also I think there may be a problem with W7 at the moment (I run the 64bit version)

Programmes can take for ever to load

but after a reboot all is well, for a while.

I've got the full pro version and it tells me that I've got some bad sectors, health down to 64% It doesn't change after a reboot.

Got also a PC , no problem with Google. Drive C's already backed up with Acronis, still don't know if I should buy a Hitachi, for 1,500 baht with a one year warranty ( seems to be made in Japan), or a Western Digital for 1,900 baht, both 500 GB, with a three year warranty. ( Made in Thailand).

[lostinisaan]

NeverSure, on 21 Oct 2014 - 13:51, said:

What operating system do you have? You may be able to make an image of your drive and a recovery disk/USB stick.

Do you have an external drive with room for an image of your "failing disk?"

It doesn't sound like hard disk to me if google is your only problem. What else caused you to think hard disk?

He mentioned drive "C", so is windows, it doesn't matter what version. If the HDD is failing making an image could also image the corrupt data... best thing is to replace the HDD and reload the OS, after all they are cheap, this gives a clean OS, after which he can load all his software, drivers etc, then his backed up files...then make an image. Making an image of a stable HDD/SSD should be considered essential

I've made a successful back up, using Acronis 2014, but needed a few attempts. It stopped, as it couldn't copy some sectors.

How do I reload the OS?

[MediaWatcher]

JeffreyO, on 21 Oct 2014 - 17:51, said:

You can attempt to repair bad sectors using chkdsk. In order to run this click 'start' and type the word 'command' in the search field. Click on 'command prompt'. Once you have done this enter the following into the black dos window

chkdsk /f /r

This will attempt to repair any bad sectors it finds. If you complete this, we can see the log and tell you what the status of your drive is.

What you say is true, but what chkdsk does is isolates bad sectors and allocates "spare sectors", there is a limited number of "spares," allocated for chkdsk usage, once used the HDD is no longer repairable, if chkdsk locates faulty sectors then the HDD should really be replaced otherwise your heading for headache after headache and still have to replace it. By the way chkdsk /r is all that's need, it first finds (/f) the faulty sectors then repairs (/r) them.

[MediaWatcher]

lostinisaan, on 21 Oct 2014 - 18:16, said:

MediaWatcher, on 21 Oct 2014 - 18:04, said:

NeverSure, on 21 Oct 2014 - 13:51, said:NeverSure, on 21 Oct 2014 - 13:51, said:

What operating system do you have? You may be able to make an image of your drive and a recovery disk/USB stick.

Do you have an external drive with room for an image of your "failing disk?"

It doesn't sound like hard disk to me if google is your only problem. What else caused you to think hard disk?

He mentioned drive "C", so is windows, it doesn't matter what version. If the HDD is failing making an image could also image the corrupt data... best thing is to replace the HDD and reload the OS, after all they are cheap, this gives a clean OS, after which he can load all his software, drivers etc, then his backed up files...then make an image. Making an image of a stable HDD/SSD should be considered essential

I've made a successful back up, using Acronis 2014, but needed a few attempts. It stopped, as it couldn't copy some sectors.

How do I reload the OS?

New HDD and a copy of your OS....

[jjablonsky]

A bad hard drive can cause many weird problems. As you have stated you have bad sectors, so it is certainly time for a replacement. Though I would suggest a clean install of your operating system and programs and then just restore your needed data from your current backup. It sounds like you may also have some maleware or virus issues.

If you don't have the original OS CD or know your installation key see this article to find out where to download any version of Windows installation CD and how to retrieve your installation key.

jandscomp.com/site/index.php/tips-and-tricks/7-things-pc-owners-should-do

Hope this helps

[Andre0720]

Do you have Baidu running?

[astral]

Also look at solid state disks for better performance

[lostinisaan]

You can attempt to repair bad sectors using chkdsk. In order to run this click 'start' and type the word 'command' in the search field. Click on 'command prompt'. Once you have done this enter the following into the black dos window

chkdsk /f /r

This will attempt to repair any bad sectors it finds. If you complete this, we can see the log and tell you what the status of your drive is.

I did that yesterday. It changed some files from to, but didn't tell me what's wrong. I do it by going to my computer- properties- tools,...

Didn't tell me anything about the status of my drive. But thanks a lot.

[arjunadawn]

I read a number of comments from backing up, running chdisk /f or /r, but I would tell you on more than one occasion I ran HDD regenerator on a hard drive and it saved everything and rebuilt the corrupt sectors. It may even take a day or two running but I have found it work a few times.

[jjablonsky]

Also look at solid state disks for better performance

Solid state drives are great for the installation of your OS, but are very cost prohibitive as a storage solution, as well as you have to make sure that your motherboard and CMOS will accomodate booting from a SSD

[HUAHIN62]

Try Hard Disk Sentinal it will tell you the state of your disk

either allaying or confirming your suspicions

There is a trial version.

Also I think there may be a problem with W7 at the moment (I run the 64bit version)

Programmes can take for ever to load

but after a reboot all is well, for a while.

I agree I am on W7 ultimate, they did an update about a week ago and since then I have a problem with my computer. It bombs out and after investigation it seems as if there is a compatibility problem with the update and my graphics card.

[Pib]

Also look at solid state disks for better performance

Solid state drives are great for the installation of your OS, but are very cost prohibitive as a storage solution, as well as you have to make sure that your motherboard and CMOS will accomodate booting from a SSD

Heck, I've got an 8 year Toshiba laptop that worked fine with an SSD which was running XP at the time...I later moved that SSD to a 7 year Toshiba laptop runnng Win 7 where the SSD works fine also....and I've got a SSD in an almost 1 year old Lenovo laptop running Win 8.1.

I guess what I'm saying I expect there are some older computers that may not like SSDs but SSDs sure worked fine in my old Toshiba laptops. I do see folks complaining on computer sales websites they just couldn't get the SSD they bought to work properly in their computer and they sent it back for a refund/replacement (of course there are plenty of similar complaints for HDDs), but when you look at some of the complaints I get the feeling the folks just did something wrong in trying to clone their drives, replace the drives, reload the OS, etc. SSDs present a SATA 3 interface to the computer just like HDDs present a SATA 3 interface.

[JacChang]

Please download these 2 programs and use them. Then restart the computer, everything will be fast.

If it works, like my post, If it doesn't QUOTE ME A HATE REPLY

1) Roguekiller

http://www.adlice.com/softwares/roguekiller/

2) ADWCleaner

https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/

Everytime my computer starts to load slow or whatnot, I just simply run these 2 scans. Takes only a few minutes, not like virus scan. And everything is fast afterwards.

[kevin2852]

In this day and age, with computer hard drives at all time low prices, a drive which exhibits bad sectors has actually already failed and is simply not worth any attempt to recondition. The best advice I can give is drop it in the Garbage bin.

As to your Google problem, There cannot be any issues with your hard drive and its interaction with your Browser unless you are running a network with multiple computers connected through an external gateway, then it might cause errors. The only other issue may be that one of your RAM simms has become faulty, if Google starts up but will not allow any searches to be done, it may not have enough RAM left to operate.

Last is the most likely issue. Assuming that you only have one machine, I think that most possibly, you have an installed conduit or term tutor virus and that you have locked your Browser and your homepage. In this case, Google or any other Browser will fail every time the Virus attempts to change the homepage which will happen a few seconds to a few minutes after startup. Now if this is the case, most problems will be removed when the HDD is discarded, but I warn you, if you restore to a new drive from a full backup, you will also restore any virus which were backed up with the Data, so best would be to only back up your own files on a DvD or two and then to fully re-install windows and drivers, ensure that the machine is clean and then reinsert your files after scanning them.

[jjablonsky]

Try Hard Disk Sentinal it will tell you the state of your disk

either allaying or confirming your suspicions

There is a trial version.

Also I think there may be a problem with W7 at the moment (I run the 64bit version)

Programmes can take for ever to load

but after a reboot all is well, for a while.

I've got the full pro version and it tells me that I've got some bad sectors, health down to 64% It doesn't change after a reboot.

Got also a PC , no problem with Google. Drive C's already backed up with Acronis, still don't know if I should buy a Hitachi, for 1,500 baht with a one year warranty ( seems to be made in Japan), or a Western Digital for 1,900 baht, both 500 GB, with a three year warranty. ( Made in Thailand).

My advice, go with the Hitachi, but my personal preference for HD is Samsung. I have had excellent track record with them over the years and a horrible one with WD Hard drives.

[jjablonsky]

You can attempt to repair bad sectors using chkdsk. In order to run this click 'start' and type the word 'command' in the search field. Click on 'command prompt'. Once you have done this enter the following into the black dos window

chkdsk /f /r

This will attempt to repair any bad sectors it finds. If you complete this, we can see the log and tell you what the status of your drive is.

You would have to go to the "log viewer" to see the log and then it will give you only cryptic information on what is wrong with the drive. If you actually have bad sectors chkdsk /R is only a short term solution for a long term problem. My favorite utility for checking the integrity of a hard drive is: HD Tune it not only check IDE and SATA drives but also will check SSD drives. You can download the free version here

[kevin2852]

Personally, since WD and Hitachi drives come out of the same factories but one marketed by a Japanese company I would go for WD.

Thai made WD HDD's are good, but be careful of which colour drive you buy because that affects the price significantly

Purple, used for surveillance, 1-4 TB, 3 Years warranty

Red, Raid only 3-6 TB, 3-5 Years Warranty

Blue, General Computing, 80G - 1 TB, 2 Years Warranty

Green, Cool and Quiet, 500G - 6 TB, 2 Years Warranty

Black, Max Performance 500G - 4 TB, 5 Years Warranty

You pay for what you get, if all you need is a low stress 80G drive then go for Blue but if you need real performance and versatility then go for a 2TB Black but it will be 5 times as dear

[laislica]

Very interesting.

I have a 9 year old desktop in the South of Spain running Win7 - 64 ultimate, 4 Gb RAM + a cheap video card.

It's like Grandma's broom - she had it all her life, it had two new stave's and six heads LOL.

It's on it's second motherboard, has bigger RAM, a new DVD and all new drives except the parallel one.

The fan on my previous good video card siezed up and cooked the processor so iit was replaced with a cheap one.

I had an assortment of 4 X SATA WD Caviar Green 1 and 2 Tb drives + a 300Gb parallel drive and parallel DVD.

Suddenly I had problems when starting, it would not boot, it would not even go into POST..

I had to switch on and off several times until it finally got going. It drove me mad.

If it got into POST, it would eventually start but it was always "fragile"

After applying upgrades and needing a reboot, it needed to be left for hours to cool before it would start so I always did that last thing.

Then there were problems to copy between HD's.

I eventually unplugged each HD and finally isolated a drive that was causing the problems and it was not C:

(C: was (is) a 1 Tb Caviar with 2 X 500 Gb partitions)

The drive with the problem was a 2Tb Caviar Green and was my main data drive!

Then everything went back to normal. I replaced the drive with a 3 Tb Caviar and (fingers crossed) all is still well, a couple of years or more later.

Maybe there was some static damage to the bad drives circuit board that was somehow holding the system down.

Whatever it was I am truly glad that it's fixed and I wish you good luck.

Since then, years later, the motherboard's internet connection failed and I inserted a cheap internet Cat 5 card.

Although I did have an Iomega external 1Tb drive go down just after it was filled with films to take to Thailand.

I was able to rescue it by reusing a 1Tb drive that had been replaced by a 2 Tb drive.

Regarding performance, check on power used with high performance drives and what temperature they run at.

I went for modest performance to stay cooler and probably quieter?

[kevin2852]

Hi Laislika,

Yes, I note your comments, The Green drives are generally an issue with desktop computers, they are cooler and quieter, basically because they are much slower and the slow write speed is what allows their huge capacities. They are not ideally suited to high pressure work and are best fitted as slave storage drives where speed is not an issue. Often they will cause errors in transferring data between drives because the speed difference is big enough to cause checksum failures and errors related to poor resend pickup.
You have to remember that in computer equipment, you pick parts by their capability and a part which has an enhanced feature will probably mean a sacrifice of other features. In HDDs generally only 1 HDD is built by a factory, the classification of the component after production is done by testing. Now, a Green drive may have a faulty motor which is not capable of sustained fast spin, so it is chipped to a lower speed and because it turns slower, it runs cooler and quieter, so is tagged Green instead of Black. In the old days , only HD Floppy drives were produced, however on testing, some were found to be faulty on one side and became Single Sided disks, others had Data collection issues and were still sold as LD disks. It just means that you can sell everything you produce, faulty or not by, giving it a different classification. When you have 3 million scrap transistors say Vcc 2.4 V instead of 2.8, which are all roughly the same, you give them a different number, list their broad spec and sell them anyway. It is not surprising that the same logic works in everything these days and computer gear is no exception.

Another regular issue is that people use software which shortcuts errors in the belief that it does something different. A good example here is the CHKDSK file which is part of DOS tools. It calls itself a disk repair tool, but God himself could not repair a disk with damaged sectors. All that it does is try to save the files crossing the error which is usually a worn spot on the disk, then it fences off the damage and rewrites the file somewhere else. Your disk now works for a while, but it is still badly damaged and that damage will get worse because it is still being hit by the read heads every time the disk rotates even though they are not allowed to read that sector. This is not a repair any more than putting a fence around a hole in the road is a road repair.

I am sorry if I am going on at length, but these little kinks are my area and I spend much of my time fixing these faults for people who barely know which hole to push the power cable into. I like to help where I can though. Have a good day sir.

[laislica]

Thanks Kevin, yes, it's all about the money.

I liked your explanation of how the drives are branded and there was I thinking that I was doing good by choosing slower and quieter LOL however, my setup works well for the use I put it to.

My desk top is not used for massive performance, rather a general machine with loads of storage.

I have loads of RAW photos and they take a lot of space so they are backed up in several places.

I have a Sony VAIO 3D, VCPF21Z1E with 8Gb RAM and a CORE i7 and it is great for photo and video processing.

The USB 3 ports are good for making backups to external drives.

Interestingly though, it's interesting how many applications fail to use more than about 4 cores at any one time.

All that glitters is not gold LOL

Cheers.