My computer is dying. No, really, I'm serious. Something bad happened that I can't identify.

First, my video card started to malfunction. Horizontal lines, distroted screen and everything. I could not do anything about it. Updated the driver, directx, reinstalled the OS, scanned with NAV, tryed every troubleshooting advice I could get. No nothing....
Then suddenly the card started working again with no apparent reason(not that I wasn't happy about it).
For a few days, everything seemed to be in order again...

THEN IT STARTED!!!

One morning I turned on my comp. Started booting, "Detecting IDE drives..." OK, stat screen OK, then when it reached "Verifying DMI Pool data..." (right when the OS starts to load) it freezed. Reseted, then again it happened, but now with colorful letters all over the screen.
Okay, I re-installed WinXP AGAIN (Damit). During the "Checking Hard Dirves" phaze, the indicator freezed at 75% for 2 hours. I fed up and restarted, formatted drive C, then started again. It worked.
But when I first got in to the desktop, I discovered that the WinXP got installed in E: partition. My C: drive was another partition.
This is just the peak of the iceberg.
SOMEHOW almost 3/4 of my files got corrupted! (DAMN) No classification. Programs, RAR, ZIP, pictures, CD images, everything!!! If I try to launch a program it displays an error "The program doesn't fit in the memory" or something else. The archives say "The file is corrupted" and the CD images corrupted too. The images simply don't display. MOREOVER, my DOCUMENTS got corrupted. I opened my novell then I saw 1244 pages of nonsense($˘^ü5~RI‚ˇand like that).

AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! :cry: :cry: :cry:

Either your harddrive is giving up or there are some NASTY worms in your neighbourhood...

No worms nor viruses. Freshly(ca. 10 min ago) updated NAV scan found nothing at all.

My Maxtor 200Gb is brand new (2 months) so I think there SHOULD be no problem with it. I heard bad thing about 120+ HDDs going haywire just after installed, but I hope that is not the case here. Or I'm doomed for sure.

There must be a way to recover at least my personal data from that disc. My novells, my self-made programs, my own songs, everything is defected now.

I really hope sombody can help me :(

There is a possibility that your motherboard is dying. I have had quite a lot of pcs die on me, I hope it is nothing but a loose cable, but I fear for the worst.
Make any back ups you can on cds

Thx efthimios, I had a guess that my motherboard is the one, but I hope not. I can't make any backups cuz I don't have a cd burner, and no need to backup the defected files :unsure:

First I need a way to recover them, or at least part of it...

Tnx anyway :ok: :(

ok, i' m not a genius in this kind of business, so i don' t think i can help you much; hoever i think you should tell us more, like:

-how old is your motherboard
-how much ram you have and of what kind
-how old his your HD and do you defrag it or use scandisk often

i don' t remember anything else to ask :blink: sorry, maybe someone else have more ideas.

the reason i ask you this is because first thing to do is to find what is causing it: motherboard, memory chip, HD? with some more info, maybe someone can help you a little more.

Okay, here it goes.

My motherboard is an, so to say, not so new model. ECS ELITEGROUP K7VTA3 v3 board with integrated AC97(never used it). I bought it ca. 4 years ago.
RAM: 768MB DDR
HDD: Already told it. approx. 2 months old Maxtor 200 GB. Partitoned into two. A 10Gb for OS and the rest in another partition. Defrag says no need to defragment it.

Any info you need?

ok, none of your components is old enough to present that kind of problems (mine are much older and work fine :D )

now, let' s go to round 2:

do you have any second HD you can use as replacement of your 200 GB Maxtor? if you do, you should try it and see if the system becames stable and if that happens, then you got a defective HD - it is in warranty, isn' t it? i once bought a 4,3 GB (very long time ago) that in less thatn a month bega to act strange (not detected by the board and when detected my system crush without warning a few time after) so i went back to the store, returned it and got a new one and problem solved.

of course in your case, you' ll probably lose everything you have in there, so i think you' ll hope the problem to be something else.

I have a 40GB HD, my old HD, I use it as mobile rack now. 130 GB certainly won't fit on that one. Besides, I don't want to back up the corrupted files that don't work. :(
I don't know if it has warranty, but I shall see to it.

Any data you require? Any advice or page I could visit? :unsure:

As far as my experience goes, this type of problems are caused by RAM!

Try replacing your RAM with another RAM (128 MB will work for testing purpose)!

If that does not solves the problem, you can go for full format of your harddisk using FDISK. Although you will loose all of your data! FDISK can detect is there are any bad sectors in your PC. Or if you think that the problem is caused by Viruses, try scanning with AVG Free Edition once!

If all this doesnot solves, then there is really some hardware defect in your PC!



:bleh: