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Thread ID: 30065	2003-02-09 19:38:00	My Computer is dying! Help please	JoGiles (1898)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
119748	2003-02-09 19:38:00	Hi there everyone. Something is up with my computer - since yesterday, my computers HD light is on constantly, and XP is having issues: 1) CD's are playing 2) Winamp says no sound devices 3) XP returns to win9x style every boot up. It looks like my harddrive - what should I do before it dies? I have two hd's, and one is pretty much new. Thanks, Jo	JoGiles (1898)
119749	2003-02-09 20:15:00	Hi Jo It doesn't really sound like a hard drive but I don't know what it is. At times like this it's a good idea to run an AV program (you do have an up to date AV program with current virus definitions don't you) and also download Adaware6 and run that too in case you have picked up some nasties. You could also try running scandisk as this will show up any disk faults and rectify them for you. That's for starters, but post more info about your computer and what you were doing when all this started. that may give one of our experts a clue and they may be able to give you better advice than I can. Some hints for the future: Is your data on the second drive or on the same drive as your OS? If it is on the same drive as your OS, as a precaution I'd copy it all across to the second drive. When all this is over, make sure you store all data on a separate drive and image your C:\ (OS & programs) drive when it is up and working OK. Then you can recover from these situations inside of 30 minutes by rewriting the image back. The idea is to have OS and programs on one drive and all data on another. You still have to keep backups of your data but it spreads the risk. If your two drives are C:\ and D:\ the data is stored on the D:\ drive and the backup is stored on C:\. Similarly, the image backup of your C:\ drive is stored on D:\. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
119750	2003-02-09 20:15:00	I guess the obvious thing to do is get copies of all your important data onto the drive that is okay (make room, just delete anything on the good drive and make room). Logical thing is to copy c:\my documents, but you don't say what applications you are using. robo.	robo (205)
119751	2003-02-09 20:46:00	Thanks for the quick replies . I have backed up all my important data and just finished a complete virus scan with no errors found . I will download Adaware 6 shortly, but i think this is a hardware problem - soon as I boot up the hard drive access light is turned on and doesn't turn off or flash at any time . Yesterday I swapped two 64MB RAM cards to one 64MB RAM card . I have a feeling this may be the problem, and so I am about to take my computer apart and try different combinations of RAM . I'll get back to you all on what I find, Thanks a lot Billy T and robo, Jonathan	JoGiles (1898)
119752	2003-02-09 21:11:00	Just another update: I put in my original RAM, but still the HD IDE light is on completly and non-stop. Things seem to work fine, but still I am unable to play CD music through winamp - it skips and is jumpy. Playing it directly through the CD player using the front controls works fine however. There are still odd things happening, like typing this message - the little '|' that shows you where your text will appear is flashing when I'm not typing - like something is working in the background or the harddrive is going crazy. thanks, and any help will be much appreciated, Jonathan	JoGiles (1898)
119753	2003-02-09 21:17:00	Go Ctl.Alt.Del on the keyboard once and see what programs are running at the time. Did you download Adaware 6. Also try Spybot. Both very good at detecting spyware. Not sure if you can with XP but if you can go Start > Run > type in msconfig and press Enter > Startup Tab > have a look at what programs are ticked and running. For a list of what each does try this link. www.answersthatwork.com Just change the _m to what ever letter to suit. Or this link. www.pacs-portal.co.uk Remove the ticks from anything that is not required and Apply/Ok, reboot and see if that helps.	Gordon. (2217)
119754	2003-02-09 21:33:00	Thanks to everyone - I think I fixed the fault. After having no adware or virus', I swapped my RAM back to the original stuff, and then tried again - no luck. After that I looked around again, and noticed that for some reason the power cable to my cd writer was unconnected. If you can imagine, my secondary ide cable goes something like this: Computer-----------CD writer---------DVD Drive And thus without power going to the cd writer, it is understandable why the DVD drive was struggling to play music CD's. This doesn't explain the oddities that windows was throwing up (no sound card, defaulting back to different 'skin' for XP, etc), but everything seems to have returned back to normal. Thanks to everyone, Jonathan Giles	JoGiles (1898)
119755	2003-02-09 22:02:00	Well because you didn't have power going to the CD-writter will not have any effect on the playback on your DvD. I don't think that was the solution, but everything is working now so there really isn't a point dwelling on it. Gordons comments however were particularygood and you should follow them should it happen again.	roofus (483)
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