Very slow disk access (repeating). Unusable. From boot onwards. 4

[12345dave]

I have checked FAQs and refer to thread779-1253495. I have an HP5261 Pavilion Notebook PIII 700MHz 256k RAM Windows XP Home (on this occasion)Version 2002 SP2. I have 're-built' this machine (it originally was Windows ME with 10Gb HD) a few months back with a new 20Gb HD. HP assure me that the BIOS can cope with this; this disk is the correct spec speed IDE etc. Originally it performed well but soon it started showing a white progress bar prior to the Windows loading screen, as described in the thread I referenced above. It is like the 'restore from hibernate bar' but without text. The HD makes a pronounced "crick crick" drive access sound many times (some sort of re-try?), and can be heard making rare 'normal' accesses which are associated, with very slow progress. It can take 25 minutes to reach the user menu. and 15 min to get to the desktop. Everything does work, just very slowly. Other memory and peripheral accesses including USB drives run normally. Sometimes the machine crashes due to time-outs. Recentlly it recovered from a crash in perfect fast working state!! No white bar..playing online video clips etc. It would shutdown and re-boot (no white bar at all) and ran very well in all aspects. Unfortunately before I could make an analysis, I ran spybot, and then closed the system down. Upon reboot the old problem returned. I have got a ntbtlog.txt as Maxthedork recommended. As yet I am not sure that the failures recorded are wrong.
Does anyone know the categoric reason for the white bar at boot? Or any ideas? Thanks.

Here is the first small part of ntbtlog.txt:

Service Pack 2 3 18 2007 17:22:40.500
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\KDCOM.DLL
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\BOOTVID.dll
Loaded driver ACPI.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\WMILIB.SYS
Loaded driver pci.sys
Loaded driver isapnp.sys
Loaded driver compbatt.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\BATTC.SYS
Loaded driver intelide.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\PCIIDEX.SYS
Loaded driver pcmcia.sys
Loaded driver MountMgr.sys
Loaded driver ftdisk.sys
Loaded driver ACPIEC.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\OPRGHDLR.SYS
Loaded driver PartMgr.sys
Loaded driver VolSnap.sys
Loaded driver atapi.sys
Loaded driver disk.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS
Loaded driver fltMgr.sys
Loaded driver PxHelp20.sys
Loaded driver Fastfat.sys
Loaded driver KSecDD.sys
Loaded driver NDIS.sys
Loaded driver Mup.sys
Loaded driver agp440.sys
Did not load driver Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC
Did not load driver Audio Codecs
Did not load driver Legacy Audio Drivers
Did not load driver Media Control Devices
Did not load driver Legacy Video Capture Devices
Did not load driver Video Codecs
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (L2TP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (IP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (PPPOE)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (PPTP)
Did not load driver Packet Scheduler Miniport
Did not load driver Direct Parallel
Did not load driver Audio Codecs
Did not load driver Legacy Audio Drivers
Did not load driver Media Control Devices
Did not load driver Legacy Video Capture Devices
Did not load driver Video Codecs
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (L2TP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (IP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (PPPOE)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (PPTP)
Did not load driver Packet Scheduler Miniport
Did not load driver Direct Parallel
Did not load driver Intel PentiumIII Processor
Did not load driver Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
Did not load driver Microsoft AC Adapter
Did not load driver Audio Codecs
Did not load driver Legacy Audio Drivers
Did not load driver Media Control Devices
Did not load driver Legacy Video Capture Devices
Did not load driver Video Codecs
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (L2TP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport (IP)
Did not load driver WAN Miniport ............

 

[Rick998]

Did the new hard disk make this sound from the time you first installed it or has this developed since you noticed the slowdown in disk access?

The reason I ask is because, unfortunately, the onset of a pronounced "crick crick" sound on drive access sounds like a classic problem with the actuator arm, i.e. the motor-driven arm that moves the read/write heads over the disk platters. If so then it's a sign that the drive is going to fail.

I'm not familiar with the laptop model... does it have a setting for SMART hard disk analysis in the BIOS and, if so, is it enabled? (so SMART can check the hard disk)

If it's a new drive then you should be able to replace it easily under warranty.

Hope this helps...

 

[linney]

Your drive manufacturer will have free diagnostic software to thoroughly check the condition of your hard drive. This software will also most probably allow you to start the procedure to return the hard drive to the manufacturer or seller for return and replacement.

Have you checked your drive for errors via XP? Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Select both boxes.

Here is something for you to listen to, see if you recognize any of the failing drive sounds recorded here.

My Ipod Tracklist
thread779-1272771

 

[12345dave]

My thanks to Rick998 and Linney. The sound developed over time, but from quite early on (1 week after new installation (last Sept.)
As a result of your points I decided to got down the diagnostic root. I got Belac Advisor and Ontrac Data Advisor; these are both available as free downloads, and very useful. I could not be sure that SMART can e implemented, but Belac claimmed that the SMART data was OK (but it was shown in light grey and I do not think this should be given much consideration). I used these products because Toshiba clearly state on their site that they do not licence any diagnostic software either at time of purchase or subsequently, if there are problems! This may affect my choice of data storage in the future.
I have not used the XP analysis because Data Advisor could not progress past 0% after an hour of running it's surface scan. So I'm going to speak to Evesham who sold me the drive, hopefully to get it replaced.
I listened to the disk sounds that Linney kindly made available, and they were interesting, but none of them were this one.
Many thanks to both replies. I will post progress, if I think it will be useful to the community.
Thanks

 

[12345dave]

Further to the above I am also using the XP checking (as recommended) and will try to re-install the driver just in case.

 

[outlookman]

1. Backup all of your data ASAP.
2. Run check disk from a bootable CD.
3. Ghost your drive if possible.
4. Run Spin-Rite on your drive.
5. If Spin-Rite does not fix your drive go buy a new drive and drop your Ghost image on the new drive.

 

[outlookman]

I forgot to mention. Check your event logs. Sometimes drive errors will be thrown in the logs.

 

[Rick998]

I'm a little confused. Your original post showed you use an "HP5261 Pavilion" notebook but your last post mentions "Toshiba clearly state on their site that they do not licence any diagnostic software".

Either way, what actual make/model of hard disk does Belarc Advisor show is installed? You need the diagnostic software from the hard disk manufacturer, not from the laptop vendor.

Hope this helps...

 

[pudda]

1.Curious- when you installed XP did you use FAT32 or NTFS?
2.Since your log file shows "Did not load driver Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC" check this out:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340

Maybe (shooting in the dark) since HP and Compaq are the same company now, could this be an issue of XP loading the wrong HAL?

The test continues...

 

[12345dave]

Thanks to outlookman. I have now run chkdsk as stated below. I may have to leave Spin Right on this occassion.

To answer Rick998's question first; the computer is Hewlet Packard and the new drive is Toshiba. Thanks Rick perhaps I had not made that clear.

My thanks also to pudda. I used FAT32, but now understand that NTFS would have been better. I will look into the HAL possibilities, if the disk is proved to be OK (interesting idea).

Progress has been slow! As I mentioned, I have now run chksdk in it's 'double box-checked' mode. The scan and sort-out phase took 3.5 days! The scan identified an unrecoverable folder in C:\Documents and Settings.....\System Certificates\My, and changed it into a file. The verification finally passed the free space as OK. The performance of the system was unchanged by this whole procedure. Evesham duly asked me to reformat. They are going to replace the drive if a newly formatted installation does not work. So I will not have been able to do all of the checking kindly offered above..... So far the format has been going for 1 hour and 5 miniutes and has just moved to 1%. Wish me luck!I will of course report the final outcome!!

 

[gpalmer711]

I suspect that the machine will be going back to evesham, or the drive at least. It should not take that long to run the chkdsk and 1 hour to do 1% is crazy.

Good luck with the format - I'm sure we will hear from you in 4 days or so when the format is complete

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[Rick998]

Sorry... I didn't pick up that it was a Toshiba HD in an HP laptop.

The time (so far) to (re-)format is ridiculous and, in my opinion, points once again to a probable physical problem with the hard disk.

When you discussed your problem with Evesham, did you mention the "crick crick" sound? Did Evesham not ask you to FDISK the drive before formatting the drive (so damaged sectors were identified/marked not to be used and the Master Boot Record created from scratch)?

 

[12345dave]

Thanks to gpalmer711 and rick998.

I certainly hope that evesham will just say, "send the drive back, you've suffered enough!", when I get to speak to them. They did not mention fdisk, but they did ask me to do the full chkdsk which I did assume would do this; I may be wrong. I will report back, possibly from the therapist's chair.

 

[Rick998]

Yet another apology... I forgot to mention that FDISK is no longer supported in XP so Evesham's suggestion to use CHKDSK was correct.

(My excuse is that I still use an old DOS floppy boot disk with FDISK on it to prepare or check small hard disks. Must be showing my age <grin>).

Best of luck with the hard disk replacement...

 

[12345dave]

Thanks Rick
Just to say this thread is not dead.
I will report back. I have phoned Evesham today and they are saying it may be another 10 days before they can look at it. I will let my kind helpers know the outcome of Evesham customer relations! At least there is someone there when you phone up.
Cheers

 

[12345dave]

Hi
My thanks to all the people who helped on this one.
Evesham very kindly replaced the HDD under warranty. It was, as suspected, faulty. They actually replaced it about 2 weeks ago. So, sorry for the slow update.

So what did I learn about my problem solving technique?
1 I may have overlooked some obvious simple procedures like chkdsk, which don't cost much, or any, time and money.
2 I should consider a hardware fault with equal likelyhood to a software fault. At least at the outset, which I did not really do.
3 Many well informed minds DO make light work, as found here.
Most grateful!
Regards
12345Dave

 

[Rick998]

12345Dave,

Glad you got it sorted and thank you for letting the forum know the outcome.

Rick