| Author |
Message |
Neil Conaty
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 4:54 pm: | |
For the last week my computer (Gateway Pentium III running Windows 98) has been freezing up. It starts with a mechanical clicking noise which repeats about every 1.5 seconds. By about the second or third click the mouse and keyboard no longer work and I have to manually shut the computer off. When I turn it on again it runs ScanDisk and will then work for between 10 and 60 minutes before it starts clicking and freezing again.
At first I thought the clicking was a disk drive (floppy or zip), but it seems to be coming from a spot lower down in the case. I have tried running with or without CD's, floppies or zip disks in the drives with no change.
The clicking sound is one the computer normally makes (once) when it is turned on or shut down. It seems some program is calling for an action and when it does not successfully carry out the order it just keeps trying and shuts out all other input.
I have tried shutting down most of the background programs on the computer (mostly Norton AntiVirus, etc.) again, with no change.
I used GoBack (Roxio) to revert the hard drive to its state 2 days before the clicking started. That had no effect.
This happens independent of any program running – games, MS Office programs – whether or not I'm signed on (DSL MSN), or even when the computer is idling. If it happens while I'm using Word, there is no recovered document when I re-start.
I receive no error messages. |
win
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 9:12 pm: | |
have you checked the hard drive for mechanical problems? |
Neil Conaty
| | Posted on Thursday, February 20, 2003 - 9:51 pm: | |
No, I haven't. I don't know how I would do that.
Would I be able to do it through a diagnostic program like scandisk or part of the Norton Suite?
Thank you,
Neil |
Kevin
| | Posted on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 3:41 am: | |
Some manufacturers have utilities to check hard drives. The utility is loaded onto a floppy and the computer rebooted, then the utility is run from dos.
IBM & Maxtor (and most likely others) both have drive check utilities available from their web sites. |
Neil Conaty
| | Posted on Monday, February 24, 2003 - 11:58 am: | |
I was able to load a program (gwscan) from the Gateway site. It was unable to read my hard drive. In consultation with tech support at Gateway I was told it was defective (they thought it was still under warranty at the time, so I didn't think they were just trying to make a sale).
I will be replacing the hard drive this weekend and need to get some information about the best way to manage the transfer as well as managing disk space in the future. I'll be posting my question in another directory here.
Thank you very much Kevin and Win for your help.
-Neil |
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