What's wrong with my PC ? is my Hard Disk dying ?

[27MaD]

So one week ago my PC crashed while i was trying to achieve better RAM timings , and when it did it didn't boot into windows after that , all i got was that circle spinning forever , i've entered automatic startup repair and did a system restore , it worked but since that day my PC became unbelievably slow and choppy , it takes more than 5 min to boot , struggles to open a game or anything but when it opens , performance is so normal , there is no dropped frames , at first i thought it's a Virus or something so i did a scan using Malwarebytes , and it detected 17 threats (16 of them were shitcoin miners) , i deleted all of them and nothing changed , tried Hard Disk Sentenial to check HDD's health , the OS hard disk health was 98% and performance was 98% , and the other HDD which has all the games installed at health was 98% and performance was 100% , the task manager doesn't show anything weird , CPU usage is 0% , RAM usage is below 20% (8 gigs of RAM ) , HDD is 0% , so what's going on ?

 

[erocker]

So what's happening with the RAM? Seems it started with that.

 

[27MaD]

So what's happening with the RAM? Seems it started with that.

Idk they are running at default timings now.

 

[lexluthermiester]

So one week ago my PC crashed while i was trying to achieve better RAM timings , and when it did it didn't boot into windows after that , all i got was that circle spinning forever , i've entered automatic startup repair and did a system restore , it worked but since that day my PC became unbelievably slow and choppy , it takes more than 5 min to boot , struggles to open a game or anything but when it opens , performance is so normal , there is no dropped frames , at first i thought it's a Virus or something so i did a scan using Malwarebytes , and it detected 17 threats (16 of them were shitcoin miners) , i deleted all of them and nothing changed , tried Hard Disk Sentenial to check HDD's health , the OS hard disk health was 98% and performance was 98% , and the other HDD which has all the games installed at health was 98% and performance was 100% , the task manager doesn't show anything weird , CPU usage is 0% , RAM usage is below 20% (8 gigs of RAM ) , HDD is 0% , so what's going on ?

Tinkering with ram timings can introduce problems that corrupt data. You may wish to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows fresh. If problems persist, then you might have a drive problem.

 

[John Naylor]

1. When the problem started, the solution was to go into BIOS and pick the set everything to default status. Since we got off FAT file systems, RAM errors weren't supposed to cause data loss, and though it's better now, still occurs.

2. When you initiated the repair, that was what likely caused the problem.

3. After restoring BIOS to default, you will often get the "Windows didn't blah blah blah .... do you want to do a repair", say no. 19/20 times everything will be fine.

4. If not, you can reboot and attempt a repair but success rates of less than they should be at this point. Most of the time, I wind up doing a fresh install.

If we can have dual BIOSs, and with small SSDs being relatively cheap. I don't see why Windows doesn't come with a built in "clone" function. In fact I seem to remember reading an article that in windows 10 after 17xx, the backup / restore functions still work but that restore **may** not be supported in the future. When a 120 GB SSD can be had for < $20, using a utility to clone your main OS seems to that $20 one seems a no brainer.

5. Until larger SSDs became affordable, we always installed the OS on a SSD and everything else was on a 2 RB SSHD. The 1st partition on the SSD was always a backup install of the OS. Work boxes might be set up ...

C:\ Boot - Operating system (128 GB SSD)

X:\ OS Backup (128 GB Partition on SSHD)
D:\ Page and temp files (64 GB Partition on SSHD)
E:\Programs (Partition on SSHD)
F:\Data (Partition on SSHD)
any mapped network drives
Z:\Optical Drive

Gaming Boxes something like ...

C:\ Boot - Operating system (128 GB SSD)

X:\ OS Backup (128 GB Partition on SSHD)
D:\ Page and temp files (64 GB Partition on SSHD)
E:\Games
F:\Programs
G:\Personal Data
any mapped network drives
Z:\Optical Drive

The order is determined based upon keeping the stuff you want the most speed in on the outer portion of the platters ... disk are about twice as fast at outside then inner tracks. Here if the SSD dies or OS gets fudged, simply go into BIOS, change the boot drive to the SSD and all is right with the world.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/clone-windows-10-drive/

Of course more and more often these days folks are using more SSDs and there's no "universal best way" set up your storage. But a $20 investment to never been in the situation you are in is a extremely cheap insurance policy. A 250 GB spare OS on SSD would cost ya $35 ... 480 GB < $50

 

[27MaD]

1. When the problem started, the solution was to go into BIOS and pick the set everything to default status. Since we got off FAT file systems, RAM errors weren't supposed to cause data loss, and though it's better now, still occurs.

2. When you initiated the repair, that was what likely caused the problem.

3. After restoring BIOS to default, you will often get the "Windows didn't blah blah blah .... do you want to do a repair", say no. 19/20 times everything will be fine.

4. If not, you can reboot and attempt a repair but success rates of less than they should be at this point. Most of the time, I wind up doing a fresh install.

If we can have dual BIOSs, and with small SSDs being relatively cheap. I don't see why Windows doesn't come with a built in "clone" function. In fact I seem to remember reading an article that in windows 10 after 17xx, the backup / restore functions still work but that restore **may** not be supported in the future. When a 120 GB SSD can be had for < $20, using a utility to clone your main OS seems to that $20 one seems a no brainer.

5. Until larger SSDs became affordable, we always installed the OS on a SSD and everything else was on a 2 RB SSHD. The 1st partition on the SSD was always a backup install of the OS. Work boxes might be set up ...

C:\ Boot - Operating system (128 GB SSD)

X:\ OS Backup (128 GB Partition on SSHD)
D:\ Page and temp files (64 GB Partition on SSHD)
E:\Programs (Partition on SSHD)
F:\Data (Partition on SSHD)
any mapped network drives
Z:\Optical Drive

Gaming Boxes something like ...

C:\ Boot - Operating system (128 GB SSD)

X:\ OS Backup (128 GB Partition on SSHD)
D:\ Page and temp files (64 GB Partition on SSHD)
E:\Games
F:\Programs
G:\Personal Data
any mapped network drives
Z:\Optical Drive

The order is determined based upon keeping the stuff you want the most speed in on the outer portion of the platters ... disk are about twice as fast at outside then inner tracks. Here if the SSD dies or OS gets fudged, simply go into BIOS, change the boot drive to the SSD and all is right with the world.

https://www.maketecheasier.com/clone-windows-10-drive/

Of course more and more often these days folks are using more SSDs and there's no "universal best way" set up your storage. But a $20 investment to never been in the situation you are in is a extremely cheap insurance policy.

Actually when the pc crashed for the first time i immediately went to the BIOS and set everything to default , that didn't fix it , automatic startup repair used to fail everytime.

 

[John Naylor]

The important part is when it asks to do a repair ... I think of Nancy Reagan "Just say No". Then if ya get the spinning arrow, go make dinner, watch a movie. If you run those services manually, they can take a long time.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Maybe time to switch the ageing HDD's for a newer one or a SSD? it is quite a ageing system you have. 27MAD

 

[Jetster]

You may have, with the system restore, reverted all your drivers to native ones. Update everything

 

[lexluthermiester]

Maybe time to switch the ageing HDD's for a newer one or a SSD? it is quite a ageing system you have. 27MAD

It's not THAT bad..

 

[Deleted member 24505]

It's not THAT bad..

Didn't nesecelery say it's bad just aging, my mate runs a 1156 rig still.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Try running a checkdisk at boot on it.

 

[Athlonite]

If and when you manage to get windows to boot properly I'd suggest running in elevated CMD window this command sfc /scannow aswell just to make sure no corrupted system files are not still hanging round fouling up the works

 

[27MaD]

Maybe time to switch the ageing HDD's for a newer one or a SSD? it is quite a ageing system you have. 27MAD

You didn't see the old Core 2 Duo system i was running 2 months ago.

 

[efikkan]

You already have a lot of good advice here.

Unstable memory configurations certainly can corrupt data. I've learned this the hard way, and with every new build or changed config I run a small batch of memory and CPU tests. You should make a CD or flashdrive of UBCD, it's super handy for testing things.

But with hardware this old, I would highly recommend considering an upgrade of the storage. The lifetime of HDDs are highly dependent on usage. Personally I replace internal HDDs after 5 years and external after 6-8 years, and definitely replace them immediately if they show any kind of SMART errors.

I would recommend looking at separate physical drives for various purposes, like one SSD dedicated to OS, one or more dedicated to different types of personal data, games etc. It makes it much easier to troubleshoot, replace etc.

 

[lexluthermiester]

my mate runs a 1156 rig still

No worries. I recently rebuilt an old Dell 1156 system and put a Xeon CPU in it with a GTX1060-6GB. It became a system with solid gaming performance.

 

[infrared]

This is why its a good idea to use something like memtest86+ (bootable usb) to verify its at least relatively stable before booting into windows, I'd bet its just corrupted something important.

Would be worth running check disk and sfc /scannow as mrk and athlonite suggested, might sort it without having to do a fresh Windows install.

Good luck, and sympathies lol, it's annoying when stuff like this happens!

 

[Hardcore Games]

My Lenovo T500 has a Core 2 Duo processor, machine still works but the old CCFL LCD is has yellowed and pretty much had it