end of the line?
 

Time (now out of business) Box, 1.3 G AMD Athlon processor, 512 M RAM on
American Megatrends MB. 40 g HDD, CD/DVD ROM drive, CDRW drive. 5 years old.
Printer, Scanner, card reader/writer, additional USB hub, Ethernet PCI card
to connect my cable modem

Replaced the MB battery which cured clock problems (date resetting to
07/02/2036 occasionally) and installed new Soundblaster PCI card after the
OEM "on board" sound died. However recently I have noticed a couple of
oddities.

1 When performing eg AVG disk scan or defrag, I can occasionally hear a
"ticking" sound at about 1hz (from the HD?) and the computer "hangs" for a
while then restarts the application.

2 Occasionally, after an apparantly normal shut down, on next re booting,
the computer runs scandisk with the "improper shut down" message. However
scandisk is in the full test mode and never completes more than 3 bars.
Scandisk in DOS from boot floppy runs through and reports no problems.
Normal re boot runs into scandisk in full test mode again .... The way I
have got over this is to re boot in safe mode, let sd go through the file
structure test, test some 28,000 sectors, start testing some 2,000,000
sectors and then kill sd and run Maintenance Wizard. This seems to "cure"
this problem.

3 When accessing data from CD (drive D) occasionally, there is a noise
(sounds a bit like a 1.44meg floppy "seeking") and the application may abort
or hang for a few seconds then continue.

4 When there is not a heatwave, on booting, the PSU fan is noisy until all
warms up. then it is quiet. (been doing this for 3? years, likely to
continue for another 3?)

Sorry to be so verbose. Questions; is it likely that 1 & 2 are indicative of
a failing HD? Is it likely that 3 is indicative of a CD/DVD ROM drive
failing (and/or HD)? IYOs is it worth replacing HDD, replace CD/DVD ROM,
replace CD-RW with a DVD-RW, replace PSU? OR Hope it hangs on for another
few months and replace with a new Vista box? OR replace right away with a
new XP box?

Any opinions out there O Gurus? If replacement is recommended, what
processor? (Pentium dual core, Athlon?) Memory? (1 M at least?) OS (XP or
Vista?) Any other goodies (LCD screen?) ...

TIA

--
Delboy

A common mistake that people made when trying to design something completely
foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Douglas Adams

end of the line?
 

"Delboy" wrote:


Sorry to be so verbose. Questions; is it likely that 1 & 2 are indicative of
a failing HD?

Yes. Identify the manufacturer of the hard drive, go to their website
and download the free diagnostic utility and run it. Almost all of
the hard drive manufacturers have these available.

Is it likely that 3 is indicative of a CD/DVD ROM drive
failing (and/or HD)?

It might be an indication of a CD/DVD drive problem, or it might be
another manifestation of the hard drive situation


IYOs is it worth replacing HDD, replace CD/DVD ROM,
replace CD-RW with a DVD-RW, replace PSU?

Replacing all of these is probably not going to be worthwhile,
although it depends on how adequate the machine is for your current
and anticipated future needs.

OR Hope it hangs on for another
few months and replace with a new Vista box?

It will almost certainly be more than a few months before you see new
Vista boxes in the stores. Figure on at least 6 months and I would
not bet against it being a year or more.

OR replace right away with a
new XP box?

Given the very low prices of basic XP systems with faster CPUs, the
same amount of RAM, and larger hard drives than what you now have I
would give this option some very serious thought before spending
anything close to half of the price of a new system on fixing up the
old one.

Check out the hard drive first, that is a zero cost item. If it is
on the way out and if you have a genuine need for a DVD writer then
that should tip the scales in favor of a new system with XP.

Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

end of the line?
 

Thanks Ron,

After much searching and emulating the Oozlum bird, I got a copy of Hutil
from Samsung. Will try it out.

BTW S.M.A.R.T. says "no problems???

--
Delboy

A common mistake that people made when trying to design something completely
foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Douglas Adams
"Ron Martell" wrote in message
...
"Delboy" wrote:


Sorry to be so verbose. Questions; is it likely that 1 & 2 are indicative
of
a failing HD?

Yes. Identify the manufacturer of the hard drive, go to their website
and download the free diagnostic utility and run it. Almost all of
the hard drive manufacturers have these available.

Is it likely that 3 is indicative of a CD/DVD ROM drive
failing (and/or HD)?

It might be an indication of a CD/DVD drive problem, or it might be
another manifestation of the hard drive situation


IYOs is it worth replacing HDD, replace CD/DVD ROM,
replace CD-RW with a DVD-RW, replace PSU?

Replacing all of these is probably not going to be worthwhile,
although it depends on how adequate the machine is for your current
and anticipated future needs.

OR Hope it hangs on for another
few months and replace with a new Vista box?

It will almost certainly be more than a few months before you see new
Vista boxes in the stores. Figure on at least 6 months and I would
not bet against it being a year or more.

OR replace right away with a
new XP box?

Given the very low prices of basic XP systems with faster CPUs, the
same amount of RAM, and larger hard drives than what you now have I
would give this option some very serious thought before spending
anything close to half of the price of a new system on fixing up the
old one.

Check out the hard drive first, that is a zero cost item. If it is
on the way out and if you have a genuine need for a DVD writer then
that should tip the scales in favor of a new system with XP.

Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."