Major HD failure, need advice

[drhenry]

Hi, I'm having major HD problems, think I know what the prob is, but want to verify 1st.
NOTE: buying a new PC is not an option at this point.

I have a 5 yr old computer, KX 133 K7 Chipset, Pentium, 600 Mgz, 20 gig HD (IDE) 256 MB memory.

1st problem began w/Win2k. Progress bar would only go 25-50% of the way, & stop. Sometimes the HD light would go out, sometimes stay on at this point. Able to boot into Safe Mode for a while, not any more.
Began switching over to Redhat 7.3 on other partition. Worked for a while, then KDE began locking up sporadically. Now, 9 out of 10 times, KDE management panel locks regularly. Switched over to Gnome.
Gnome & KDE lock up when I mount a Zip drive, sometimes on opening File manager, IOWs, sometimes w/o doing anything, almost always when screensave kicks in. Sometimes mid-post on blog.
The CMOS battery reset the time to Jan. 1, 2000 (once), & received a checksum error on bootup (once).
So, I'm thinking it's
A. Time to get new CMOS battery
B. Time to get new power supply
C. Replace IDE cables?
D. Replace memory?

Any & all help would be most appreciated. Thanx!

 

[edfair]

A. Then get and run memtest, think it is memtst76 and available off the web. And lastly, get and run the manufacturer's diagnostic for the hard drive.

Sounds suspiciously like the HD is slowly sinking in quicksand.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[paparazi]

drhenry
Piggy back this hard drive on another system, copy over any important files, then at least if things go pear shaped you won't be crying in your breakfast bowl lol.

At this point you may choose to use the particular hard drive manufactures utility software to carry out a full HDD fitness test.
I would be tempted just to "low level" the whole thing and clean install.

But before you touch the hard drive try checking:

Have you checked the motherboard for bulging capacitors?
see:

http://www.badcaps.com

For a description of what to look for.

Also swap out the memory, or at least swap around using one stick at a time for the purpose of fault elimination.

It might also be wise to try another power supply, it could be this one is starting to fail, allowing voltage to fluctuate beyond tollerable parameters causing the lockups you describe.

Are all fans spinning freely (CPU/PSU and graphics) any one of these seizing could cause overheat lockups.
Obviously heatsinks need to be free of debris build up.

Have you detected any unusual hard drive noises?

Martin




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[csab]

Maybe you should make some monitoring and test with "Ultimate Boot CD" a freeware you can just download legally... (make some search with Google).

( Caution ! Do not overwrite any of your important files! )

Good luck