Is my computer knackered ?

joffy

Hi there
My time computer is 8years old(windows 98)
It seems to be quite noisy when booting,freezes a couple of times a week,wont load photos from camera-keeps saying something about drive c.
tried defragging but only got upto 70% after 3 days so i gave up
any ideas cheers JB

pchelpman

joffy wrote:

keeps saying something about drive c.

What exactly? Please post full details of any error or other on screen messages you are seeing.

The noises you hear could be the hard drive about to die on you. Back everything up immediately on to something else e.g. external hard drive, VCDs, DVDs or similar.

Post back and update us so we can help more.

Little_John

Proberbly
The noise could be either a fan (CPU or power supply) or the hard drive itself drives that fail usually have a higher pitched noise like a jet engine.
The CPU fan if failing, failed more likley due to age would become noisy and then go quiet as the fan stopped working the CPU would then begin to get warm and eventually overheat and the PC would crash or run very slow.
The power supply fan failing would again be noisy and stop once the fan stops hold your hand at the back of the PSU to see if any air is moving. a power supply that is hot will be unable to provide a stable voltage/current whatever to the pc and would cause damage.
The problems you are having would point to it more of a hard drive problem, write errors to c: are proberbly your errors whihc would indicate the drive is failing. I would backup your files if you can and stop using the pc untill you can replace the drive or you will loose anything on there. the age of the pc may make it dificult to find a drive that is compatible you will proberbly be limited to 32GB so anything over 40GB will be a waste, I would buy a 20GB as your PC wont support anything bigger. Good luck finding one. It could be the excuse you need to buy a new PC.

albertross_2

go into safe mode (F8 at boot), run a full scandisk on it, then try the defrag again... virus checkers, lack of ram causing swapping, and firewalls etc. can cause the defrag to restart constantly

if you have the win98 cd, there is a file called defrag.inf on it, which if you double click on it will restart the PC in safe mode and do a defrag when it boots.

You can usually get a free hard disk checker from the HD manufacturers site.. if you are worried about it.

run windowsupdate while you can (support is being dropped for 98 soon), and check it for spyware, viruses etc..

mikey9863

try a reformat. i have fround that useful in the past. remember to make a back up first.

Gibblestick

Windows 98 will slow down and become less reliable, the more you use it. It fills up with unwanted bits of programs and reqistry entries, eventually bringing it to its knees.
A full reformat/rebuild would be a good idea but, in all honesty, an 8 year old PC is going to die fairly soon. Parts do wear out and if the hard drive dies, that's pretty much it, if anything else dies you will have serious problems finding replacements. Even the most seasoned money saver would admit you've had your moneys worth from it. Maybe it's time to retire the poor old thing and get a nice shiny new one.

mr_fishbulb

From the length of time it is taking to do a defrag, it sounds like your hard drive is failing. I would get a new one quick.

You can get a new PC nowadays for a couple of hundred quid - good investment.

barginunter

Have you done all the obvious things like delete temporary files and cookies, run Ad-Aware and Spybot, virus checked etc.
Theres a site https://www.pcpitstop.com which tests your machine and suggests fixes. A program called Easycleaner will clean out your registry and unecessary files. These are all things you can do before Formatting which is really the last resort. Good luck.

mr_fishbulb

I would suggest finding out who makes your hard drive and then visiting their website. You should be able to download a program to check the disk and see if it's failing.

Foggy

The noises and the messages would point toward a hard drive fault. Backup your important files as it could completely go at any time.

You can then follow the advice given here but also give the inside of the case a good clean out. You may be one of the few who opens up the case and hoovers out the dust but most don't. This could be causing your system to overheat/freeze up etc.

I agree with Mr Fishbulb and Gibblestick - in 'PC years' yours deserves a telegram from the queen. Sorry joffy its time to check the PC bargain threads...

mentat_2

First try to determine where the noise is coming from and what sort of noise it is and ensure it's not the CD drive spinning up and down. Unless your PC has a security system on the case you will be able to run it with the cover removed - don't touch anything, but it might help determine where the sound is coming from. Once determined, power it back down, turn it off at the wall, but leave the power cable in for a while (this helps disapate any remaining charge).

Noise From....

CPU area - it will be the fan, it may be possible to clean or replace this, however most fans are connected to the heatsink which is clipped or stuck to the CPU, so that might be tricky.

Power supply area - this will be the PSU fan, you can remove, clean and replace this if it's dirty and laboring a bit.

Hard disk - the nasty one. If it clicks two or three times on startup it is on the way out - backup and recover what you can and replace the drive. If it labours and makes winding up and down noises, it's in a bit of trouble but recoverable. Backup, do a scandisk from safemode, uninstall what you don't need, perform some housekeeping on your data and then defrag it.

After a reboot if it's still the same then you'll need to format it, back it up and then use your windows startup floppy or CD and reformat it and reinstall windows 98. Before you install anything else see if it makes the noise again - if not we're sorted, if it does....

Use the windows startup floppy/CD and this time delete the active partitions and create new ones - onscreen prompts should guide you through this, but if you get stuck I'm sure we can help out on here. Once the partitions are deleted, Create new ones and format them and then reinstall windows as above.

If it's STILL misbehaving AND making a noise it's toast - take it out and shoot it. Replace the drive and enjoy the new technology.


Crahsing/Freezing is most likely to be caused by the source of the noise above, but there is a remote possibility it is memory related. But then that's another worry for another day.

Hope some of this helps and Good Luck!