Hard drive failure?

Twice now our computer has not been able to book up and we have had to boot using the bootdisk and repair using the chkdsk function.

I heard that this can sometimes be a sign of hard drive failure. We have scanned the drive mulitple times and it keeps coming up with viruses despite having 2 seperate virus scanners (Mcfee and Avira).

Is there a utility that we can use to check the integrity of our hard drive? We are currently using a Western digital 160gb drive we bought new about 1 year ago (WD1600JBRTL).

Thanks.

 

First, running 2 antivirus scanners at once is a bad idea they you are LESS safe that way. Second, those 2 scanners you use are crap. You can check the drive by running the chkdsk function like you did. If you have viruses though, i would just format and reinstall your operating system. You never will know if you fully removed it.

 

You don't mention what model the computer is.

1) Press F12 while booting and look for the item Hard Drive Diagnostic Test on the menu and run that.

2) Press F12 while booting and look for the item Boot To Utility Partition and select that. Select the Custom Test, Select Hard Drive, select the Run Test button at the bottom of the screen.

 

Avira antivirus is actually one of the recommened ones from this site and that is the reason I started using it. What antivirus do you recommend?

Our laptop is a Dell M1210 T7200 2.0 running Windows XP. We tried the F12 while booting but didn't see the Hard Drive Diagnositc Test, but we didn't know about the Utility partition.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts?

 

Personally I would back up my files and reinstall the system. Chances are it will cure most of the problems anyway, if not all of them. If your HDD was buggered, you would be having a lot more issues then a few failed boots.
Seems like it just needs a clean format and reinstall.
Also use Avast antivirus rather then 2 seperate scanners. Ive NEVER had any virus while using Avast, and its completely free!

 

Have you had any problems with shutdown, sleep, or hibernate modes on this unit? If you do not get a "clean" shutdown, it can cause the system not to write markers indicating that disks were stopped cleanly, thus causing chkdsks on reboot. If you truly cannot boot the system without a separate boot disk, it sounds like something is repeatedly corrupting the MBR (Master Boot Record), and that's very much a possibility if you have dual virus scanners running, each thinking the other is "messing" with your system.

For now, uninstall both virus scanners, reboot, perform a chkdsk, and see if you can get one or more successful shutdowns.

-David

 

Hard drive prices are plumetting. Get yourself a new high capacity drive and junk the old one!