Help Me Troubleshoot a PC Problem

[Duane]

The last month or so my computer will freeze for a few seconds and then go back to normal. Sometimes the computer will unfreeze and make a clicking noise (hard drive?).

The system is about 2 years old with the following hardware:

250GB Seagate Boot Drive - only about 2GB of room left on the drive
Two Samsung 750GB Storage Drives
8GB RAM
Intel Q9550 Processor
ASUS Rampage Forumal LGA 755 X48 MB
HD4870 Video Card - 512MB RAM
PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply​

 

[Yeagermeister]

The last month or so my computer will freeze for a few seconds and then go back to normal. Sometimes the computer will unfreeze and make a clicking noise (hard drive?).

The system is about 2 years old with the following hardware:

250GB Seagate Boot Drive - only about 2GB of room left on the drive
Two Samsung 750GB Storage Drives
8GB RAM
Intel Q9550 Processor
ASUS Rampage Forumal LGA 755 X48 MB
HD4870 Video Card - 512MB RAM
PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply​

First off delete some of the porn. 2GB out of 250? WOW

Is the clicking noise only when it pauses or constant?

 

[BrAinPaiNt]

The clicking noise screams hard drive to me but I don't know if that is the cause of it freezing up or not.

 

[Yeagermeister]

The clicking noise screams hard drive to me but I don't know if that is the cause of it freezing up or not.

The hard drive in my work computer will do that a couple of times a day. I have ran diags on it and it passes. I just make sure I backup every couple of days.

 

[67CowboysFan]

Sound like the computer is writing something to the drive. Happens all the time if you are doing a lot of work.

It is unlikely that you are using up 8gb of ram but if you are this could also be your computer using the hard drive as virtual memory. It wouldn't hurt to do a scan and check for adware or a virus.

 

[Meat-O-Rama]

Hard drive.

Do as suggested earlier in the thread and start backing up your important stuff regularly. Either to a new hard drive or some sort of external hard drive. The day is coming soon where the drive will be dead.

 

[Kangaroo]

The clicking noise screams hard drive to me but I don't know if that is the cause of it freezing up or not.

It would if the hard drive has failed but not fully failed that is what they do.

Buy an external drive or use a online backup company and backup all your files now do not wait or blow it off do it now.

If it crashes hard and you can not get on the pc anymore I have something to try to recover data

 

[casmith07]

The clicking noise sounds like your hard drive is dying. Back up your data NOW and get a new drive.

If the problem persists after getting a new drive, then it could be the motherboard, but generally when a motherboard fails/dies it just goes zap with no signs of death.

 

[bbgun]

The clicking noise sounds like your hard drive is dying. Back up your data NOW and get a new drive.

http://img828.*************/img828/5454/400190607fu31194619453.jpg

I admire this guy's priorities.

 

[Jenky]

The last month or so my computer will freeze for a few seconds and then go back to normal. Sometimes the computer will unfreeze and make a clicking noise (hard drive?).

The system is about 2 years old with the following hardware:

250GB Seagate Boot Drive - only about 2GB of room left on the drive
Two Samsung 750GB Storage Drives
8GB RAM
Intel Q9550 Processor
ASUS Rampage Forumal LGA 755 X48 MB
HD4870 Video Card - 512MB RAM
PC Power & Cooling 750W Power Supply​

Clicking noise = hard drive failing. Probably some bad sectors. Open up command prompt and type in /chkdsk

Also if you are looking to replace this drive, look into Western Digital.

 

[Duane]

First off delete some of the porn. 2GB out of 250? WOW

Is the clicking noise only when it pauses or constant?

Clicks when it unpauses. Already backed it up with a new external drive.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[Reality]

One thing that can cause what you are seeing, Duane, is power saving turned on for the hard drives. If the drive is powered down, there will be a slight pause (everything freezes except mouse movement usually) when you access that hard drive before it spins up. And by "access" that means anything being read/written to a powered down drive, which is not limited to user initiated tasks, such as page files or other programs, data or config files. Some drives will click when they spin up which could be the sound you are hearing. This is quite common on secondary (non-boot) hard drives because they are not used as often.

The clicking can also be a sign of a bad hard drive but the sound would be more common than only occurring after the pause.

If you don't think that's the problem, check your Event Log to see if any errors are occurring right around the time of the pause/freeze.

-Reality

 

[Duane]

One thing that can cause what you are seeing, Duane, is power saving turned on for the hard drives. If the drive is powered down, there will be a slight pause (everything freezes except mouse movement usually) when you access that hard drive before it spins up. And by "access" that means anything being read/written to a powered down drive, which is not limited to user initiated tasks, such as page files or other programs, data or config files. Some drives will click when they spin up which could be the sound you are hearing. This is quite common on secondary (non-boot) hard drives because they are not used as often.

The clicking can also be a sign of a bad hard drive but the sound would be more common than only occurring after the pause.

If you don't think that's the problem, check your Event Log to see if any errors are occurring right around the time of the pause/freeze.

-Reality

Thanks, I changed the setting from 20mins to Never.