Problems with my W3V. Please help

hi all,

i have an asus w3v with windows xp pro sp2. everything has been fine until this week when i have noticed gradually increasing boot times and now recurrent blue screens.

the sequence of events are:
- when my w3v boots up, i get the asus logo and then the windows splash screen with the bar running under it (normal duration)
- it would stay there was over 5 minutes then turns black for another few minutes before showing the login screen
- again there is a further delay before the desktop shows and this is not useable for another minute or 2.
- during these delays, the hard disk drive light will stay a constant blue with no disk noise

normally, from pressing the on button to a useable desktop would be about 1min 30sec. now it is approaching 10 minutes

the thing is, it always eventually boots up and once one the desktop, everything is fine

i have not installed any new software or hardware

i have scanned for virus and spyware in safe mode with norton and it says it is clean

when i view event viewer, it states that there are problems with unreable boot sectors during startup and consequently some system drivers are not installed

i therefore used chkdsk and it lists multiple (stopped counting at 50) unreable sectors

i think that there is some problem with my hard-drive, however, anyone with other suggestions

thanks

 

I think you have diagnosed the problem. Sounds like your drive is bad. If you haven't backed up, I would do so right away while you can still startup. If you can image your entire drive using something like Ghost then go for it. Although, when I had problems like this in the past, I had trouble imaging a corrupt drive. If the problem gets worse, you might even start hearing some clicking/grinding noise from the hard drive. In all my experiences with bad drives, they would slowly die rather than all of a sudden stop working. Your description sounds just like my past experiences.

I had one other instance of getting a drive to boot as a last resort using a freezer method that I don't really recommend but you can google it. May have just been coincidence but it worked for me long enough to get some files off the dead hard drive.

 

I would back up and reformat, every 3-4 months a reformat does very well, sure you'll have to reinstall but its well worth the cleanse

Then check for a problem again, if its still there, its definitely the hard drive as you've already diagnosed.

 

Thanks all,

I will try a reformat (fortunately, i have backed up) and see if the problem persists.

I had a few problems copying certain files due to read errors but after a reboot or 2, it seemed to copy ok.

The funny thing is that chkdsk suggests all the errors are on the d: partition which is not where i thought the boot sector would be.

Otherwise might be a visit to the service centre.