Hard Drive In "imminent Danger Of Failing"

[SodiumChloride]

During the blaster worm scare i decided to go to the microsoft update website to download the fix to prevent myself from getting the worm. Halfway through installing the patch, microsoft's website crashed (probably high traffic), and the installation failed. Hours later I visited a reputable website and the computer decided to crash. I had to hold down the power button in order to shut it off. Upon restarting, a blue screen of death appeared telling me this:

"STOP 0x000000ED UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" and some time later...
"STOP 0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL"

After talking to a nice tech support man from India, i was told to reboot with the windows XP reinstall CD. Upon doing so, the computer ran the checkdisk DOS program and "fixed" the hard drive... sorta.

When the computer restarted a message appeared stating that my hard drive was in "imminent danger of failing." ScanDisk and defragging did absolutely nothing to help.

What's wrong: It takes about 60 seconds longer to start up and i can't play movies or games that require a good system like mine to run. Processes like hashing a bittorrent file take ages longer than before.

My system: 2GHz P4, Win XP, 512MB RDRAM, 40GB (5GB free) NTFS hard drive (ATA-100 or 66, Ultra DMA)

Are there any good tools to diagnose my problem, should i just reinstall the OS, or should i but a new 80+GB hard drive and do some thing to copy all files (including OS) from one HD to another? How about reformatting? Any help would be appreciated!

Edit: I did use system restore to a point before I downloaded the windows update, but to no avail.

[TheFilePirater]

ehhh sounds pretty bad, u might wanna back-up all ur stuff and do a clean formatt and install xp, sounds kinda liek a virus....

[SodiumChloride]

I was relieved when i got back in... i immediately saved all my music to disk :D I organise my music folder based on the time i downloaded them, so having to re-download them would have really made me mad :D


Edit: Oh, and norton antivirus detected no problems

[kurtsl0an]

it sounds like u have bad clusters on ur hard drive, which is an impending hard drive failure. did u say chkdsk found bad clusters and repaired them? i can't remember, but just in case u cannot fix a bad cluster, only move it 2 an unused spot on ur hard drive - sooner or later though, it'll get u.

[abu_has_the_power]

yea, backup ur important stuff, then reinstall. u might even want to reconfigure ur partitions cuz some viruses screw that up too.

[KILskOOL]

Actually if you computer crashed it's probably because of winows xp update. Same thing happened to me is you serial FCKGW RHQQ2.............? or another fake? Windows always checks the serial and if it's not good it uninstalls windows.

[SodiumChloride]

Nah it's a legal version shipped with it from dell

[clocker]

Originally posted by KILskOOL@20 October 2003 - 16:22
Windows always checks the serial and if it's not good it uninstalls windows.
I did not know they could do that.

[kurtsl0an]

Originally posted by clocker+21 October 2003 - 01:14--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (clocker @ 21 October 2003 - 01:14)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-KILskOOL@20 October 2003 - 16:22
Windows always checks the serial and if it&#39;s not good it uninstalls windows.
I did not know they could do that. [/b][/quote]
that would b cool 2 c - "now uninstalling your windows since u don&#39;t have an authorized serial number, thank you"....

i&#39;ve neva seen it either, and i have plenty of xp machines out there w/bogus keys - :D

[clocker]

Originally posted by kurtsl0an+20 October 2003 - 19:31--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (kurtsl0an &#064; 20 October 2003 - 19:31)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Originally posted by clocker@21 October 2003 - 01:14
<!--QuoteBegin-KILskOOL@20 October 2003 - 16:22
Windows always checks the serial and if it&#39;s not good it uninstalls windows.
I did not know they could do that.
that would b cool 2 c - "now uninstalling your windows since u don&#39;t have an authorized serial number, thank you"....

i&#39;ve neva seen it either, and i have plenty of xp machines out there w/bogus keys - :D [/b][/quote]
I suspect it would go more like this...

"Naughty, naughty, naughty.

ZAP&#33;

Thank you for pirating Microsoft."

[ricochet]

Call dell and b*itch at them enough and they will send you a refirbished hard drive the same as you have now... Then buy a second hard drive and install that as the main and the 1 from dell as the slave.

The hard drive you have now dosent have much space left.

JUst a sugestion ... Good Luck ;)

[Jg427]

I had the same problem. After calling Dell about three times they sent out a new hard drive.

I used a program that reads the hard drive&#39;s smart attributes to see what the problem was. I forget the name, but one is Disk-Checkup. (http://www.topshareware.com/DiskCheckup-download-3832.htm) Another is Active Smart, or do a search for "smart attributes" and several will show up.

[InverseKinetix]

Try to find a program, from your hard disk vendor that will reset your drive to FACTORY SETTINGS, ie the same as when it was shipped. Not all vendors release such apps but i&#39;ve seen it for some maxtor and ibm/toshiba units.

[Kunal]

Originally posted by KILskOOL@20 October 2003 - 16:22
Windows always checks the serial and if it&#39;s not good it uninstalls windows.
I Heard from a few reliable sources M&#036; uninstall windows only if its the FCKGW one&#33;

[SodiumChloride]

Thanks for the help :D It&#39;s still slow even though the diagnostic program says everyhting&#39;s ok.. hmm. Must be a software thing

[Neo 721]

Depending on the amount of data you have, or the amount of clusters that have acumulated over time. It can take several attemps to defragment a drive to its former glory.

[Neo 721]

Depending on the amount of data you have, or the amount of clusters that have acumulated over time. It can take several attemps to defragment a drive to its former glory.

[darkewolf]

when you ran scandisk, did you do a surface scan, or just a filescan? a surface san would tell you if you had bad sectors or not. I&#39;d definitely recommend one of those scan programs from the manufacturer that were mentioned, as well.

If the drive itself is intact, I&#39;d say that its prolly gonna be format time (spirits, but I am really starting to HATE that word&#33;&#33;&#33;)

I didnt know that M&#036; could do that either. I wouldnt put it past those tightassed bastards to do it tho. Glad they dont pull that shit with 98, my key is ummm..."borrowed".