Windows 7 upgrade/new HDD problems

beardiedog
beardiedog Posts: 658 Forumite
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edited 11 October 2016 at 9:37PM in Techie Stuff
A couple of months ago I cloned my XP IDE HDD and performed an in place upgrade to Windows 7 via Vista to save reinstalling all applications again. After some time installing all the updates and tweaking things to how I wanted them, I eventually was up and running and getting used to things and all seemed fine for a while. I installed the XP drive as a slave as a safeguard to boot from if things went wrong. And they did.

We had the big storm and a power cut. Windows wouldn't start. I tried a repair which didn't work so had to do a restore point and it worked for a bit.

Then started having trouble installing updates. Solved that eventually. Then I got the same trojan twice which MSE sorted. Then Chrome started slowing and the latest update kept crashing the computer. Reverted back to the previous version then all was OK for a while again.

When it wouldn't boot again a few days later, repair found a few errors and repaired them. Back working again. This week the drive wouldn't boot again. Tried a repair which didn't work and I didn't do a restore but it booted OK. Checked the disk and memory for errors, viruses, spyware, rootkits - nothing.

Boot order keeps changing in the BIOS after a shutdown. Sometimes I can't get into the BIOS so have to shut down again.

I'm now back to using my XP drive which is performing much better than W7.

Surely the HDD can't be faulty already.

Any ideas on what I should do next? TIA.
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Comments

  • forgotmyname
    forgotmyname Posts: 32,545 Forumite
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    Ive had a brand new hard drive fail within a few weeks. I used it to store all my photo's and family videos etc.

    Bit of a nightmare when it failed so soon.

    So it does happen.
    Censorship Reigns Supreme in Troll City...

  • grumpycrab
    grumpycrab Posts: 4,989 Forumite
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    A couple of things to check. If you're using an old desktop replace the motherboard battery (CR2023); HD Sentinel (amongst others) will quickly tell you status of all your plugged in hard disks
    http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel.php
    If you put your general location in your Profile, somebody here may be able to come and help you.
  • beardiedog
    beardiedog Posts: 658 Forumite
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    edited 12 October 2016 at 9:29PM
    forgotmyname wrote: »
    Ive had a brand new hard drive fail within a few weeks. I used it to store all my photo's and family videos etc.

    Bit of a nightmare when it failed so soon.

    So it does happen.

    :eek: Hope you managed to rescue everything.

    Mine is a new old WD 160GB bought as a spare. I only paid about £16 for it so not worth bothering with warranty. Fortunately I had the XP drive to fall back on, which I backed up the day's files on and also to a USB stick. I think there are a couple of files that I may have lost if it's gone completely belly up but not disastrous.
  • beardiedog
    beardiedog Posts: 658 Forumite
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    grumpycrab wrote: »
    A couple of things to check. If you're using an old desktop replace the motherboard battery (CR2023); HD Sentinel (amongst others) will quickly tell you status of all your plugged in hard disks
    http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel.php

    The battery is fairly new and I don't have the same problems with the XP drive or the clock losing or gaining time. I think it's either a bad drive or a flaky installation.

    I'll check out Sentinel, thanks.
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    beardiedog wrote: »
    Boot order keeps changing in the BIOS after a shutdown. Sometimes I can't get into the BIOS so have to shut down again.

    It sounds like it might be a similar issue to one I had in the thread below. To cut a long story short, the IDE controller on the drive had failed. This caused problems with the BIOS HDD detection.

    http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5473556
  • beardiedog
    beardiedog Posts: 658 Forumite
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    esuhl wrote: »
    It sounds like it might be a similar issue to one I had in the thread below. To cut a long story short, the IDE controller on the drive had failed. This caused problems with the BIOS HDD detection.

    http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5473556

    Thanks esuhl. My system is quite old - P4 2.93Gig but well within the spec for W7. I use it mainly for general office work plus I run an old DOS program which is why I'm still using XP. I thought I would venture into upgrading to W7 but it's basically been a nightmare from the start TBH. NTVDM.exe keeps crashing for a start and it unceremoniously chucks me out of "DOS" to black window. Plus all the other stuff I mentioned in my OP.

    Unfortunatley I don't have time to investigate further at the moment as I've got a few urgent jobs to do so I'm just glad my old drive is working OK to get me through the next week or so. :)
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    beardiedog wrote: »
    ...plus I run an old DOS program which is why I'm still using XP.

    Have you tried using DOSBox? It's a DOS emulator:
    http://www.dosbox.com/
    beardiedog wrote: »
    I thought I would venture into upgrading to W7 but it's basically been a nightmare from the start TBH. NTVDM.exe keeps crashing for a start and it unceremoniously chucks me out of "DOS" to black window. Plus all the other stuff I mentioned in my OP.

    The BIOS issues don't sound like they'd be software-related, so I reckon you might have a faulty IDE controller on the affected drive or a dodgy IDE cable. Have you tried using a different one?

    And maybe try a clean installation of Win7 (if that's possible with a Vista upgrade CD... I think it is).
    beardiedog wrote: »
    Unfortunatley I don't have time to investigate further at the moment as I've got a few urgent jobs to do so I'm just glad my old drive is working OK to get me through the next week or so. :)

    No worries. Hope you get it sorted when you have the time. :)
  • beardiedog
    beardiedog Posts: 658 Forumite
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    esuhl wrote: »
    Have you tried using DOSBox? It's a DOS emulator:
    http://www.dosbox.com/

    Thanks. I tried using DOSBox a few years ago but I couldn't get it to print to LPT1. However, I've since found out there's a utility, I think called Printfil, which addresses this problem.
    The BIOS issues don't sound like they'd be software-related, so I reckon you might have a faulty IDE controller on the affected drive or a dodgy IDE cable. Have you tried using a different one?

    No, not yet, I don't have a spare IDE cable to hand so I'll need to get hold of one. I wonder if I might have damaged it when I added the second drive, it was quite a stretch. That's something I can check quite quickly.
    And maybe try a clean installation of Win7 (if that's possible with a Vista upgrade CD... I think it is).

    That's going to be my final option. I have both Vista and W7 upgrade versions. :)
  • forgotmyname
    forgotmyname Posts: 32,545 Forumite
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    beardiedog wrote: »
    :eek: Hope you managed to rescue everything.

    Mine is a new old WD 160GB bought as a spare. I only paid about £16 for it so not worth bothering with warranty. Fortunately I had the XP drive to fall back on, which I backed up the day's files on and also to a USB stick. I think there are a couple of files that I may have lost if it's gone completely belly up but not disastrous.


    I think so, the issue i have is i am impatient and use RAID stripe setups, so after copying all the pictures from several PC's i deleted them and removed the drives.. eek time....

    Some i put back without issues, but others needed a full surface scan for lost files which took many hours per drive.

    Took me approx 2 weeks to recover them all, a hard lesson.

    Dont trust new drives.
    Censorship Reigns Supreme in Troll City...

  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    forgotmyname wrote: »
    I think so, the issue i have is i am impatient and use RAID stripe setups...

    I'd never use motherboard-implemented fakeRAID. I know several people who've lost everything on their RAID drives when the RAID controller stopped working.

    Unlike proper RAID, fakeRAID is a proprietary non-standard implementation of RAID, so you can't just swap out the RAID controller (i.e. motherboard) unless you can get the exact same model with the exact same firmware.

    Pretty ironic if you're using mirrored drives for redundancy.

    Probably worth getting an SSD -- maybe a PCIe one if speed is particularly important to you.
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