XP Hard Disk Failure...sometimes

Question

I have a Dimension XPS and I'm getting the Primary Hard Disk failure hit F1/ F2 message when i start it up. The system isn't very old(less than 6 months). When i start up i can hear the hard disk wind up then several clank noises from the read/write heads. I found that if(while not powered on) i shake the PC violently, wait a few seconds for things to stop shaking inside ^_^ it sometimes boots up correctly.

When it boots up correctly, I've run tests on the hard disk and no errors can be detected.

My first guess would be the read/write heads are being left in a bad position when i power down and are "stuck" somehow. Could a virus or some other software be parking the read/writes heads in a bad location or is this just the hard disk telling me it's about to poop out?

ejn63 · Answer

Get the drive replaced.  Back up your irreplaceable data immediately and ask Dell for a warranty replacement.

oldxpst550 · Answer

I've been having the same problem over the past week. It just happened again tonight. I shut my computer down, opened it up, disconnected the hard drive, blew on the connections with some compressed air, and put it all back together. Then my computer started up fine. If I keep having problems, I might just get a new hard drive, maybe upgrade to 120GB drive or something more modern than the 20GB drive that I got with the system around 4 years ago. Plus, this would be the 2nd hard drive that I've gone through since owning this computer. I guess I should start backing my files up in case things go really downhill from here. Good luck!

Navin kurian · Answer

How do I run 90-90 Hard Drive Diagnostics (Dell Hard Drive Confidence

Test Utility) on Dell™ OptiPlex™ and Dimension™ computers?
http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?dn=1030780
At the Dell splash screen, press the + + keys at the

same time.The computer beeps once to acknowledge that the hard drive

diagnostics have been initiated and the following message appears:

IDE Diagnostics running, please wait

run the dell 32 bit diagnostics how?

pop in the dell resource cd , reboot the comp , press F12 when you see

the dell logo ,choose IDE CD ROM , choose boot from cd rom , choose 32 bit from the menu options,choose 32 bit again , choose express test. IF

you get any errors apart from error reading optical drive call up dell tech support

abscond2k · Answer

I ran anti virus software and it didn't turn up anything, however, i tried opening a txt file and nothing happened. So i did a search on NotPad.exe and the notepad in my system32 folder was only 3k in size, not the real notepad. No clue what this 3k program was doing or how it got there but since i've replaced it with the real notepad program I haven't had any problems booting up. Coincidence maybe, I'll see over the next week or so if the problem comes back.

Is there any place in windows a program can get itself to run just before the PC shutsdown?

Storage, Drives & Media

XP Hard Disk Failure...sometimes

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