Is this an HDD issue???

[Kokopelli]

Ok, here's the situation. Last week my system started moving very slow. It would take around 3-minutes just to load into the user profiles where it normally would take around 30-seconds. The system is an AMD XP 1900, 512 SDRAM and XP has SP1. I ran the usual, Windows update, Virus scan, scandisk/defrag, driver update, etc. Didn't pick anything up. Saturday afternoon, it became worse and I started receiving the infamous BSoD with a hard memory dump. I figured the OS needed a good nuke and here's where the problem began.

I have a 200g, Maxtor HDD. At the time, I had a 10g partition for the OS and two 40g partitions for the games, etc. I backed everything up, (took 4-hours due to the blasted BSoD's and painfully slow system) and restarted with the XP disk. Here's were the problems started.. I got into the section where you can set the partitions. I selected my primary 10g partition and told it to format in NTFS.

The format process took close to 40 minutes and ended with an error relating to "...damaged partition, incomplete format..." I deleted that partition, recreated it (leaving the two 40g's alone) and same error. Thinking it was a possible drive issue, I put Win2k and selected to format via NTFS. Took forever to format it, but it completed the format and began to install 2k. I stopped the 2k installed and reinserted the XP disk. Selected to format for Fat32 - took forever to format, but once it was done XP installed with no problems.

After installation, I converted the format back to NTFS and began to install the necessary drivers. (mind you, it was 0300 now..) Yesterday, I went to update the computer with the critical M$0ft updates and I got the blasted "Hard Mem Dump" again. Shortly after, the blasted thing started to repeat the process before, moving slow, etc with high CPU utilization. I have a firewall installed and locked it down and shut off my web connection. Same thing occured.

Last night I decided to whipe the drive completely, killing all the partitions. Recreated a 10g for the OS and besides taking forever, it installed with no noticable problems. During M$0ft update, I got another blasted Hard Mem dump. But it installed with no problems when I dl'd and installed the update manually. I went into the Disk Manager to create a new, logical 40g partition and formated it. It took 40 minutes to perform the format on this partition...

I was able to install and play FarCry with little problems lastnight, but I'd like to figure out why it is taking so long to do things. e.g. copy/paste large files, format, etc. Any ideas?

 

[trunks2k]

I'd check to make sure your memory is working. Check the memory on boot and try replacing the RAM that is known to be good.

 

[Kokopelli]

The thought that the RAM is the issue has crossed my mind and I do have a RAM test utility at home. Will have to try and run it tonight.