Computer help forum: Help with Glitchy Computer

eg the specs.

Have you used SSDs instead of conventional hard drives?

I will let others consider the problems.

Mark

I find many forget to ask for that. And no, I don't have the step by step for your machine but I do find mistakes on the install all the time.

Bob

I have checked for malware and excessive processes (Thanks for the link). Here is an update to the situation which may help clarify things:

I ran scandisk while I was at work. When I came back to comp it said, "Disk Reading Error: Please Restart" on a black screen. Therefore, I figured it was either my cd rom drive or hard drive. After unplugging and replugging in the cables to both devices I restarted and it booted up just fine. I shut it down, then booted it up again and the same Disk Reading Error popped up again. This time I only unplugged the cables to my hard drive and it worked again.

Therefore, is it reasonable to assume it is my hard drive that is the issue? I own a SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive. There have been a few reports of these drives crashing or no longer working for no apparent reason.

Also of possible relevance is that I upgraded my graphics card to a GeForce GTX 550 Ti about 2 weeks ago. It hasn't had any problems that I've noticed thus far (running temps have been stable, no undue load/lag)

If my comp specs are still relevant, here they are:

CORSAIR XMS 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

ASRock P67 PRO3 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

Windows 7 Professional

And like I've said, I built this comp Aug 2011 and it has worked flawlessly up until now.

Why I asked about the install of Windows. Many of these require us to do arcane things like check the firmware of the hard drive, install Intel's RST application and of course check the power supply rating and swap in a fresh new SATA cable just to be sure.

The clues are here about the lack of a proper Windows install but here's the thing that wipes out most owners. Ready? "It worked before."

This one is rough on today's user/owners as it doesn't matter. As there can be issues with such large drives we only see the issue if some size or number of files are reached and it worked before is only causing a pause along the way to how to fix it.

But drives are cheap, data recovery is not. I'd clone that drive and use the clone.
Bob

Clone that drive prior to any drive testing.

Think about it and it will dawn on you why.

have a look at Bob's and my discussion on my own SATA hdd over a year ago.
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-19411_102-515717/sata-hdd-showing-up-as-removable-drive/

It is long and involved and in it Bob pointed me towards Intel's RST and also upgrading the Samsung hdd firmware.

I've been going well ever since.

Mark

Glad it worked out.

If nothing else it's a testament to the sad state of affairs for those that build their own machines or get one that isn't ready to use.
Bob

I located the link to update my firmware on my Samsung HDD at http://www.jack-brennan.com/samsung-firmware-update-for-p67-and-sb850/

However, after downloading it and extracting the zip file to a cd I could not boot it. I made sure that the cd drive booted first in BIOS and it even made a noise upon restart, but nothing happened. Any clues to why this would be other than the firmware not actually working? It's possible that my firmware is up to date, but I don't know how to check that.

I wanted to update the firmware before installing Intel's RST. I have it downloaded, but it said I needed to configure F6 and RAID BIOS before installing this driver. How should I go about this?

That's not how it works.

if you need to install the firmware update via a bootable CD, you must burn the data to a CD as an ISO

In fact the instructions in that link are not at all clear. The file download seems to be a .rar file, not a .zip file, so you will need a .rar extractor to extract those files. Windows 7 will extract .zip files but not .rar files, so you need a utility. This HowTo Geek page shows how.

"Then", the extracted file is UBCDFixes-TLER-F3spinpoint.iso and this needs to be burnt to a CD as an ISO in order for it to boot correctly.

But with all this, I would be a little cautious. I see that Jack Bennan has "Upon request i have cleaned out most unnecessary files from the downloadable ISO. The file size is now 13MB from 295MB - 95% decrease". That worries me.

My drives are Seagate, (Seagate and Samsung are now one), and I went to the Seagate web site to search for and download a DriveDetect utility which identified my drives then offered a one click to the correct web page to check for firmware updates.

I feel with something like this, trusting 3rd party downloads is risky because if the incorrect firmware is installed, it could kill the drive dead.

Why not go to http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=samsung-drives&vgnextoid=ef2e2e32b3223310VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD and start searching for your Samsung drives and utilities so you can ensure you get the proper firmware updates?

Mark

Neither Seagate or Samsung had any firmware for my particular HDD on their sites. Therefore, I figure it is time to move on to try installing Intel RST. The only problem is that my BIOS is currently configured to IDE and it needs to be RAID. Unless there is a method to switch it without uninstalling Windows 7 that does not require 2+ HDDs, I imagine I will have to start over again. This might be the best way to go so I can install everything right this time.

Have you tried booting the system with Linux live CD. If you can boot and run Linux then you have a better clue it is the hard drive. Here are a few links for version that I use.

http://fedoraproject.org/

http://www.ubuntu.com/

You can use this program to burn the ISO file to a CD

http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

The next link is for using a thumb drive to boot a live CD. I prefer Yumi because it allows me to have more then one live CD to boot from. If you read the list of programs that you can use from the thumb drive you will find other diagnostic programs to try if you like. If you choose to use one of the diagnostic programs I recommend Ultimate Boot CD.

BE WARNED THAT SOME OF THEM ARE NOT FOR THE NOVICE OR FAINT OF HEART.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Since you just changed your video card do you have the old one laying around. To be sure it is not the new one you can try reinstalling the old one to see if that changes the symptoms.

Also one more comment. I am sure you know this but just to make sure. You know that running a malware check is not a total guarantee that you do not have malware.

Just saw Bob reply and is he right about the large hard drives. You can use the live CD I posted if you need to do data recovery on the drive.

One tip on drives, I always partition a large into 2 drives or more. My C drives are rarely above 100GB and the D and E drives get the remaining space. You can move your Libraries folder to the D drive and make it for data only. E Drive can be for temp backups or anything else you just want to throw at it. lol

I partitioned my drive into two smaller ones. Thanks for the tip