Unreadable Sectors

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BrianPotter

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Hard disk File Type NTFS
Windows XP Home Edition

On my laptop the loading of Windows XP would only take around 30 seconds, but now as a result of a “unreadable sector of the hard drive”, now it takes around 1 minute 30 seconds, and also some programs crash to desktop randomly, however the rest of computer is working fine.

I ran an anti-virus programme called AVG as I had many times before and the computer crashed whilst running AVG. Following this tried I to run AVG after reboot, but the programme froze in the same place each time, on a file amongst Cookies stored in the Windows folder on the computer, around where the computer had crashed whilst it was running.

As a result I ran SCANDISK checking “automatically fix system errors” and “Scan for and attempt to recover bad sectors”, when the programme had finished running it stated that certain sectors were damaged and could not be read.

I am assuming this was a result of the anti-virus scanner crash.

It has also affected some DOS-based programmes, making them continually crash to the desktop.

Is there anything I can do to help restore the boot up speed to as it was before?

I have tried the System Restore function on XP without success.

Thanks in advance
 
could this be a result of you not clearing your cookies often? i do that about weekly so crap doesnt build up in there and cause the problem your talking about; or stor viruses or whatever.
or since it affected a bunch of programs; and if yoiur HD was somewhat fragmented you could have jarred the laptop and scratched a few sectors on the HD making them unreadable. regardless of how they were lost you cant recover them and if they damaged any system files youre better off formatting and reinstalling windows.
system restore in winXP sucks i think. it works most of the time but it doesnt do the job well.
 
In your situation, I know exactly what I'd do...but you probably won't like the answer.

Format and redo the partition.

Hopefully you have another computer you'd be able to use to back up the important things, or a second hard drive...or something. ;) I would seriously consider this option. Continued use of a drive that is having such problems can cause everything to just...well, get worse. I don't know if it could actually lead to hardware problems concerning your hard drive...but I'd think that it could.

If you do choose this option, a suggestion for you...if you're not using the NTFS file system, use it. It will save you problems like this in the future. And if you're already using it? *shrug* Consider Linux. ^_^
 
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