Two hard drives, one problem!

[Xenphir]

It seems the past two or three days, my PC is getting slower and slower, and today it will barely start up at all. With start up repair it said some removable storage or the hard drives were broken. I searched up a few symptoms of my PC and when I tried to find out why I had no system restore points at all when one was just made yesterday, someone asked if the person (the one who asked the question on another forum) was dual-booting with XP. He wasn't, so the rest of the answers didn't seem helpful, but I am.

So now I'm here, asking for help because E has some of the best techies around. My PC freezes a lot now, and is very slow. I had 32 bit windows 7 and I recently switched it to 64 bit windows 7 because XP kept popping up by itself. Figured it was just a good time to get rid of both the old ones, ya know?

Well the way this 64 bit disk worked, was I had to pick a hard drive to over install it. Naturally I picked the biggest one, the 32 bit windows 7. That still left XP, but I hoped it wouldn't be an issue.

I want to know how to get rid of the XP hard drive completely, or just let it stay dormant as a sort of storage since it can hold 75 GB of data.

[cptBacon]

Hey Xenphir,

When you open Windows Explorer from Windows 7, you can click the Computer icon in the left hand pane to bring up your partitions. I'm assuming you've done a single partition per drive, so you should see one that has your Windows 7 install (probably , and another that has your Windows XP install. It might not necessarily be the D: drive, depending on what kind of non-disk drives you have installed, but it will still be listed in the Hard Disk Drives section.

From the explorer, right-click on the secondary drive. Toward the bottom of the context menu, you should see an option that says "Format...". Choose that option. This is what I see when I do so:

Bacon's format options

I would strongly recommend leaving the drop-down menu options as they are, unless something other than NTFS is selected as your file system. Unless you plan to dual boot with some flavor of Linux, NTFS is going to server you better. You can specify whatever you want in the Volume label text box - I used "Files" for my files drive.

The last piece of advice I would give you is to uncheck the Quick Format box. Doing a full format will do the extra step of checking each sector on your physical platters for hardware error. I get the impression that this is a bit of an older disk, so you definitely want it to map out the bad sectors so it doesn't try writing to them.

After all that, just hit Start. Windows is smart enough to not let you format the boot drive for the particular OS you're using, so you shouldn't be able to format your Windows 7 drive anyway. When it's finished, your second drive should be ready for writing.

If you do have a tangled mess of partitions to sort through, I would recommend using some sort of partition management software over the Windows boot disk. MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is pretty damn good for a free tool if you need it, and it's way more convenient than using the Windows tools. Just be careful you don't blow away something you need.

[Xenphir]

I did as you said, and it seemed to format it without a problem!

However, the problem still persists. If it helps, I can tell you some strange things that happened after switching from 32 to 64 bit windows 7 since it might be that. However, I'd like to avoid reformatting that disk again so soon if possible.

After I over-wrote 32 with 64, I used my account as the main one. Then, I made my dad an user account. The strange thing was that his recycling bin upon first start-up had over 50 thousand files in it! I looked through them and it was all random pictures or files that seemed like complete junk, stuff we've never seen before. It looked similar to temporary internet files folder or something close to that.

Another strange thing is that it was all fine until the last few days but I don't recall doing anything special. I ran my Avast! virus software but didn't catch anything.


Edit: Today when it tried to start up it said the disk could not be read, press Ctrl Alt Del to restart. :/

[Psi]

Two Physical Disks, or One Physical Disk - two logical volumes?

If it is two logical volumes its possible you have the same root cause - a failing physical disk.
Have a look at these - http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

Although its a guide, if you are getting SMART errors, and these diagnostic tools indicate an error, that may be your problem.
Some will say it just fails a SMART test, others will show why - sometimes its spin up times causing the problem, or seek issues.

You said you booted of the x64 disk, and selected the x32 win 7 disk - as you didn't format it as part of the install, I am guessing it provided an upgrade rather than replace, meaning file system errors might still be present on the Windows 7 disk.

[Xenphir]

Well, without asking me my father reformatted it again anyway. I have no idea if he just updated, wrote over, or anything. He was literally like: "I don't know, I just put in the disc and followed it." -.-;

Thanks for all the help though guys. If I am still experiencing issues I think I'll just have to take it to my professional friend.


Though the hard drive shouldn't be failing, at least not the Win 64 one. Since I just got that one less than a year ago I think, because we needed more space and it has almost 500gb of space. It shouldn't be that old, it's newer than the XP one.

But they are two separate disks. I think, because I have two drives? Thanks anyway though, for trying to help

[Xenphir]

Okay, it's still doing it, now after just one day! So now I'm starting to think there is something wrong with the Visuals because when I tried to press ctrl alt delete to close all the programs (They were freezing up again), windows said: "Failure to display security and shut down options. The logon process was unable to display security and logon options when CTRL+ALT+DELETE was pressed. If the operating system does not respond, press ESC or restart the computer by using the power switch."

Also, about a week ago when this stuff first started happening, a video I was watching in full screen closed and all my Aero effects for desktop were off. The bar at the bottom changed my usual green transparency to an ugly bluish grey solid colour, and so did all of the window borders.

Also a few days ago, when I right click my desktop to view the refresh, personalize, gadgets etc, it showed the options for a split second and went black. My start menu was blank, showing just my picture and the see-through menu, and anything I clicked on was black or simply invisible. Previews by hovering over the Open firefox were blank, or other programs, were also blank.

[Xenphir]

Update since it still isn't fixed: I think it really is actually my display driver. o-O;

My PC crashed just now and a blue screen popped up with white text but it lasted for only a second so I could not read it. However, upon restarting my PC Nivida (The name that my display card/graphics card thing is by) asked if I wanted to update/install something to improve some things. So I'm like, "Maybe that is what's wrong!"

Well in order to install it, it says I need a GeForce 9600 GT, AMD Athlon(tm) II x2 250 Processor, 4GB usable RAM, and Windows 7 Ultimate. Well, the thing is, when I press and hold the windows button and press R to open the Run box, and type "dxdiag", it says I have GeForce 9600 GT. So, something between that and my PC isn't connecting right or reading right I think.

[Xenphir]

Update: So mozilla firefox just un-installed by itself and I cannot reinstall it. My PC also will not stop freezing, even in safe mode so I must use this very slow and annoying laptop that can barely connect to the internet.

Any hints ideas or anything would be greatly appreciated. I might have to take a break from E if I cannot post, since my laptop won't stay connected long enough to do so.