'My Computer' Not Responding!

Fairuza · 09-20-2009, 10:36 AM

Last night, I re-installed the IDE 80GB slave drive and after re-formatting it, I transferred my data onto it.

My operating system and applications are on the SATA 360GB system drive.

Normally this PC runs very smoothly and fast for it's age and specs, which is AMD Athlon 64 2.41GHz with 1GB RAM.

Today, when I turned it on, booting was especially slow and when I came to open 'My Computer' there was the window, but nothing in there. Eventually, up came a dialogue, saying "This program is not responding".

Obviously, I'm rather panicked, because this is the main system drive and storage area we're talking about here. Explorer being one of the most basic functions in Windows. So I suspect a big problem - but what can it be?

Interestingly, my ext. USB drive opens up as a fast as normal and I'm using this browser, without any hitch.

How can I find out what is wrong? In this instance, I have no idea where to start troubleshooting. Any suggestions appreciated, as I'm now getting stressed!

Update. I've just rebooted without the slave IDE drive and I'm back up to speed.

So, now we know the problem is with that drive. But what...? Obviously, I need some way to analyse it, but I'm not sure how I would go about that, at this point.

Additional info: It's been wiped and re-formatted to NTFS as one block. It was originally partitioned, under the FAT32 file system and served as a reliable data storage slave, for years and without a hitch.

Fortunately all of our critical data is backed up (Which I did manually last night) on the 500GB USB ext. drive.

Slaymate · 09-20-2009, 01:00 PM

You may need to re-install your chipset drivers.

Go to the manufacturers website, of the suspect hard drive, and download there diagnostic program and run it (if available).

Mak213 · 09-20-2009, 03:14 PM

I would say that this could be a 2 fold issue.

1. Could be that the PSU is not powerful enough to handle the load of everything you have hooked up.
2. the drive could be on the verge of death and is eating more power from the PSU than it should. If this is the case it could end up damaging or blowing your PSU. I know a bad floppy drive did this to me a while back. It was sucking so much power from the PSU that it blew. It was a 550W PSU running only 1 Hard drive, 1 Optical Drive and the floppy drive along with the mobo. So it does happen.

I would check the power rating of the PSU. Use a online calculator and also a meter to test the PSU.

Fairuza · 09-20-2009, 03:52 PM

Mak, I doubt it. The PSU I'm running here is the Hiper Type R, Modular rated at 580w (which is said to deliver the true rated power). I doubt very much it's the PSU, not least because it's handled very many more drives, in past configurations. I purchased the best PSU I could find at the time, as an investment because I'd had so many bricks blow on me in the past.

But that's not to say it can't break down. I'll see if I can get it tested.

The system seems to run fine, without this drive onboard. It could, as you say, be sucking more power, if it's faulty.

But remember - this has only happened, since I reformatted from FAT32 to NTFS and rebuilt my entire data back onto it.

The drive is recognised by the system but it's causing an instability, like I've never seen. Eventually, it comes up but the entire system is crawling. But open the USB drive and everything appears relatively normal.

I'm going to leave the drive out of the case until I can get it tested by a pro. Also, I will see if I can get the Hiper tested as well.

Mak213 · 09-20-2009, 05:48 PM

Just because you had bought a decent PSU when you could doesnt mean anything when you are working with faulty hardware. If the hard drive is drawing more power than it is supposed to it doesnt matter if you have a top of line PSU rated at 1200W or a generic one rated at 200W. A piece of hardware that is faulty and drawing more power than it should stresses the rails and forces them to use more power than they are rated for which ends up bricking the PSU.

It doesnt matter how the drive worked previously either. It could be that this last time you plugged it in that something got mixed up with putting the power molex in it and causing it to have this behavior.

It can work for a million hours but that next 5 minutes can break it down to nothing. How a thing works before never matters. It matters how it is working now.

My floppy drive worked fine since 1994. But i took it out, put it in that machine in 2003 and sure enough it had gotten messed up, drawing to much power and causing my PSU to blow and almost taking my brand new Mobo and CPu which cost me almost $1K at the time with it.

So dont let past behavior affect you train of thought. If the system is stable without it and after hooking it up it acts this way there is something wrong with that drive, no matter how it behaved in the past.

Fairuza · 09-20-2009, 07:24 PM

That's what I'm saying: That it's most likely to be the drive that's faulty. I am sure the PSU is fine (unless the faulty drive has left some residual damage).

This is particularly annoying, because I've just found out that not all of the files I copied have taken on the USB drive.

So I need data recovery now.

Mak213 · 09-20-2009, 07:53 PM

Yes while it is the drive, it can also have affected the PSU. You need to test it.

Fairuza · 09-20-2009, 08:13 PM

How can I undelete files?

S0ULphIRE · 09-20-2009, 09:15 PM

Mak, I doubt it's a problem with the PSU. Or with the drive 'sucking' more power from the psu.

Fairuza, you'll need to grab yourself a data recovery program. There are quite a few free ones out there that do a good job, I'm assuming you want to get the data off the 80Gb drive?

As to the actual problem, My Computer is freezing when you try to go into it because it's trying to read the 80Gb drive and failing. I'd suggest first to go into Disk Management (right click on the 'My Computer icon, select 'Manage') and make sure you can see the drive there. If you can, make sure it's initialised and partitioned.
If you can't see it, then go into your BIOS settings and make sure you've got the correct drive configuration selected. E.g. you'll usually have options like 'Enhanced', 'Auto', 'Standard', etc. make sure you select the option which supports Sata AND IDE interfaces.

Mak213 · 09-20-2009, 09:42 PM

Fairuza has already done the whole Disk Management aspect. I gave instructions on that in a previous thread.

Logical Drive Deleted. Help!

I know that is how this partition was created and formatted to NTFS. So that isnt the issue since that was done to get the drive this far. The only reason why i brought up the aspect that i did is because i experienced it myself previously. My system was up and running just fine then one day it blew out. After testing all my components it turned out to be my floppy drive was using to much power and killed my PSU cause it ended up damaging one of the rails to such a extent that ti fried the PSU.

Maybe the drive didnt partition or format correctly? That could be it. Maybe using a tool like GParted would be better for the task of formatting, who knows. I am trying to present some options that could be possible with the situation given. Since the system works without the drive and with it there are issues i just want to make sure that some options are presented as to what it could be. I may very well be wrong, and to be honest i hope i am. I just want to present it.

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