Can't fix disk grinding noise; odd system behavior

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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

Legenda in Aeternum
Aug 29, 2006
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My daughter told me that her PC (win7 home) was acting strangely; passwords were reverting to previous values among other problems. Well, that would be strange. I did see that the POP3 password I had set up a few years ago in Outlook had gone missing.

When the machine boot, it takes about 6 minutes to start up and, once the Windows logo comes up, the disk makes a lot of noise. I wasn't sure if it was a grinding noise or just excessive seeking. But it sure sounded like a disk problem.

The disk has SMART and everything looked good. So I grabbed a spare 1 TB drive and cloned their drive to it, then booted it to Win7. Same seeking noise. So I defragged it. Same massive seeking noise. It's a perfectly good replacement disk that I had been using recently, so it's not making a noise other than normal spin and seeking. What could cause the cloned system to show the same noisy behavior? Or have I been spoiled by my SSD, and this much noise is normal? I can't post a recording, but I've been working with PCs for more than 20 years and have never heard noise like this from a disk that was not failing.

As I said or implied above, my best guess is really, really massive seeking, or failing to find a sector and having multiple retries. Both drives have passed cursory tests, full chkdsk runs.

I'll be running memtest and diagnostics from the ultimate boot CD.
 
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thently

Distinguished
May 10, 2007
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Take you spare disk and load a fresh copy of windows see if the issue keeps happening. This will be the only way to take the old os/virus/malware out of the equation. and depending on how old this system is a fresh install of childrens pc's is highly reccomended on the year or 2. I have never seen so much unessisary/plain malware on a computer kids are on.

Thent
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

Legenda in Aeternum
Aug 29, 2006
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Sigh. Much work to do, but you are right. I may be a little ahead of that curve. I've done backups to an external eSata drive, but I've forgotten what's on them. If I did a restorable system backup, I could restore that to the spare drive and see if it grinds. If it does, then ... ??

The second thing that occurred to me was that the controller is bad and causing the grinding by not recognizing successful seeks. On reflection, I think that this is nonsense and can't happen. But wild ideas do pop into my head on occasion.
 
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Onus

Onus

Titan
Jan 27, 2006
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Does it grind when it's just sitting idle at the Desktop? I'd be concerned about an infucktion also. No anti-virus catches everything. Get a "second opinion" from Malware Bytes or some other.
Also, rule out the possibility that a fan isn't making that noise. A failing bearing can make interesting noises.
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

Legenda in Aeternum
Aug 29, 2006
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Onus

It only makes the noise when we expect it to be doing something. There is one fan, and it isn't that fan. I've run it with the case open and listened, and it sounds like the disk. Interesting thought, though. Maybe I'll pull the power from the DVD drive and see if that is what's driving me more nuts than I was last week.

Might even stick a finger in the fan during boot up. And download MB, or something that will run from an ISO boot image. I don't want to deal with two conflicting AVs on the same system - that's why I pulled my adware killer off when I enabled all features of NAV.

So what malware scanner lends itself to running from a bootable CD these days?
 
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4Ryan6

4Ryan6

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Apr 14, 2002
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Definitely sounds like some type malware to me could be one of those HDD killers that overworks the drive until it fails, and when you cloned the HDD you cloned it over as well.

Norton used to be the same for me until it got a malware that actually disabled Nortons direct effectiveness, it still looked active ran scans, downloaded updates but was actually useless, that was the end of my Nortons days and have not used it since.

ESET has an online scanner you can download free and run on your machine, if there is anything embedded causing these problems it will find it.

http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

Ran it on mine and discovered the Norton disabled, that pretty much sold me right there, been using ESET Internet Security ever since.

Good Luck! Ry

 
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COLGeek

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
Apr 6, 2009
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WK, check this link for a great tool to add to your arsenal:

http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd

Burn to CD and boot from it. Be sure to update when asked and scan away. Good tool and free.

A grinding noise implies a mechanical issue. Make sure all of the fans are free from obstructions and don't have excessive dust build-up on them. One misplaced lump of crud can cause some pretty bizarre harmonics on a fast spinning fan. I would also take a peek at the innards of the PSU to see if it was gunked up as well.

Good luck!
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

Legenda in Aeternum
Aug 29, 2006
13,249
3
51,960
Update

I spent too much time with their machine this weekend. Not much progress.
1) The machine does not grind booted from my multiboot USB drive. Seems to be disk related.
2) Malwarebyte, Norton, and a rootkit too did not find any problem.
3) I put the system drive aside, booted the cloned drive, and used the factory reset. No grinding.
3.5) I applied all updates since the machine was made, including the service pack. That took a while. Some grinding noise. I really think it's seeks; I've used that same drive in my machine and the sound level is reasonable.
4) The AVG boot cd failed to scan the machine. Running it produced a message that the scan failed. No idea there; either incompatible Gateway hardware, a BIOS infestation, or bad juju.

Meantime, my wife reports that her favorites disappeared. Well, that's a big problem. I poked around and found that the toolbar wasn't visible but all the favorites were still there.

I'm going to finish the rebuild, copy everything over, and call it a week. Does anyone know how to create an account on the new OS so that it copies the unique identifier from the old OS and my girls can access their files on the old drive without more tinkering on my part?
 
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