The issues with my PC at the moment are quite numerous, so this will be long but hopefully pretty in depth to pinpoint what might be wrong faster. About a month and a half ago I started getting some issues on my PC with freezing. This happens whilst browsing the internet or just using my PC on desktop. Since the issue, I have been playing games without a single problem, I've never crashed during a game, the performance Im getting in these games has stayed the same, basically everything is just great with games (2-4 hour sessions sometimes, no freezes, no crashes). The issue is basically my PC will freeze, the sound will buzz and go crazy, then after a few seconds the PC resumes. However the mouse will glitch, going weird colours (red, yellow) and the picture glitches (for example it changes to the hand and just sticks on it, stuff like that). Sometimes the PC just freezes altogether and won't even resume (same buzzing sound), and once or twice its froze, then resumed and been fine (although I noticed a drastic drop in performance, especially in games, although this freeze has only happened maybe 2-3 times). These freezes are fairly often, but also seem fairly random, sometimes happening after only 20-40 mins after booting up, sometimes after hours. Again, these usually happen whilst on the internet, or just on the desktop (listening to music, office, chat programs, that sort of thing). The reason I've left it so long is I've just gone back to Uni and don't really have the means to replace parts. This said, at the moment, I can now afford a replacement hard drive, and since the problem has now gotten worse over time (much more frequent, but still not during games, just browsing) I'm looking to get this problem sorted out.
Before I get into why I think this is a hard drive issue, I want to go over all the steps I've taken in order to solve the problem myself:
Since it usually happened whilst browsing the internet, I swapped from Chrome to Firefox, and reinstalled Flash.
I swapped my RAM out, changed their slots, and tried with just one stick in. Also did a memory check, no issues found.
I did a hard drive defrag, also did a hard drive check and nothing found.
CPU, GPU and HDD temps are fine both during idle and whilst playing games, there is no overheating.
My graphics card drivers, motherboard drivers, bios version, etc are all up to date, they were when the problems started, and have been even as new GPU drivers have came out.
I recently did an OS reinstall. I made a partition to keep some data, and since the reinstall which I did about 1 day ago I've only had 1 freeze, although the freeze was the same as I've had before.
The reason I believe it's a HDD problem is because I somewhat regularly hear clicking noises coming from my PC. This usually happens on boot up (when it says 'loading operating system'), and also happens sometimes when I first make it to desktop. This never goes on longer than 5 mins after bootup however, and I've never heard the clicking during one of the freezes. Of course, this is bad, and I unplugged the CD drive from my PC (since it sounded like it could have been that), so I'm pretty positive its the HDD. I saw a lot of suggestions that these issues could be caused from HDD failure, so I've downloaded two tools: CrystalDiskInfo, and HD Tune Pro. I have a few screenshots and noticed that my Reallocated Sector Count has gone up a fair amount since the issue started.
http://i.imgur.com/Dk08nrS.png
This is a picture I took a day or two after the issue started, with 39 reallocated sectors. I was told to monitor these values in particular (errors, sectors etc) and if they go up daily, weekly, monthly etc, it was the sign of a hard drive failure. Now, about a month and a half later, I have this:
http://i.imgur.com/t95TkVJ.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZYsYAsv.png
I got a screenshot from HD Tune Pro also to verify, and I have the same results in both: 98 reallocated sectors. This is obviously quite a jump. I did a health scan of the sectors in HD Tune Pro, but it just turned out 100%, although I assume this is because the bad sectors have been reallocated? At anyrate, this, coupled with the clicking (and the fact it says caution) pretty much points to a hard drive issue. My question, is 98 reallocated sectors pretty bad? Is that jump in that space of time a big cause for concern? Could a failure in HDD be causing my freezes? The PC is self built, I did it about a year and a half ago now (build in April/May last year, around that time), my first build and this is the first issue I've had.
My PC full specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Intel Core i5 2500K CPU
8GB RAM
Z68X-UD3H-B3 Gigabyte Motherboard
Hitachi HDS721010DLE630 1TB Hard Drive
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be fairly indepth so I can get a good answer. Thanks in advance.
Before I get into why I think this is a hard drive issue, I want to go over all the steps I've taken in order to solve the problem myself:
Since it usually happened whilst browsing the internet, I swapped from Chrome to Firefox, and reinstalled Flash.
I swapped my RAM out, changed their slots, and tried with just one stick in. Also did a memory check, no issues found.
I did a hard drive defrag, also did a hard drive check and nothing found.
CPU, GPU and HDD temps are fine both during idle and whilst playing games, there is no overheating.
My graphics card drivers, motherboard drivers, bios version, etc are all up to date, they were when the problems started, and have been even as new GPU drivers have came out.
I recently did an OS reinstall. I made a partition to keep some data, and since the reinstall which I did about 1 day ago I've only had 1 freeze, although the freeze was the same as I've had before.
The reason I believe it's a HDD problem is because I somewhat regularly hear clicking noises coming from my PC. This usually happens on boot up (when it says 'loading operating system'), and also happens sometimes when I first make it to desktop. This never goes on longer than 5 mins after bootup however, and I've never heard the clicking during one of the freezes. Of course, this is bad, and I unplugged the CD drive from my PC (since it sounded like it could have been that), so I'm pretty positive its the HDD. I saw a lot of suggestions that these issues could be caused from HDD failure, so I've downloaded two tools: CrystalDiskInfo, and HD Tune Pro. I have a few screenshots and noticed that my Reallocated Sector Count has gone up a fair amount since the issue started.
http://i.imgur.com/Dk08nrS.png
This is a picture I took a day or two after the issue started, with 39 reallocated sectors. I was told to monitor these values in particular (errors, sectors etc) and if they go up daily, weekly, monthly etc, it was the sign of a hard drive failure. Now, about a month and a half later, I have this:
http://i.imgur.com/t95TkVJ.png
http://i.imgur.com/ZYsYAsv.png
I got a screenshot from HD Tune Pro also to verify, and I have the same results in both: 98 reallocated sectors. This is obviously quite a jump. I did a health scan of the sectors in HD Tune Pro, but it just turned out 100%, although I assume this is because the bad sectors have been reallocated? At anyrate, this, coupled with the clicking (and the fact it says caution) pretty much points to a hard drive issue. My question, is 98 reallocated sectors pretty bad? Is that jump in that space of time a big cause for concern? Could a failure in HDD be causing my freezes? The PC is self built, I did it about a year and a half ago now (build in April/May last year, around that time), my first build and this is the first issue I've had.
My PC full specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Intel Core i5 2500K CPU
8GB RAM
Z68X-UD3H-B3 Gigabyte Motherboard
Hitachi HDS721010DLE630 1TB Hard Drive
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be fairly indepth so I can get a good answer. Thanks in advance.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram