I guess I wasn’t clear enough earlier. Everything works now, although I’m afraid that it could all crap out again like it did before. I’m assuming that the sudden crashing is due to my hard drive failing on me, but that the data on the hard drive is more or less okay, as evidenced by my continued usage of the computer with no problems. In case I’m wrong, though, if I image the drive and put that image on my new drive, it shouldn’t have these random crashes, correct? That is purely a problem with the hard drive itself and not a function of the data on it, right?
The windows crashing is most likely due not to direct mechanical failure of the drive (e.g. locking up), but due to the corruption of the system files that reside in the failing sectors of the drive. When it’s restarted chkdsk may or may not be able to recover and relocate those files. Depending on how critical they are windows may or may not run, or the problem may show up later when you run a program the uses one of those files.
After restoring the image to the new drive, running the System File Checker (Start, Run, sfc /scannow) may fix any remaining corrupted system files. Be sure and go to Windows Update afterward.
Ah okay, thanks. Things seem to be okay for now, and everything that I thought was lost and is now found seems to be okay as well, so hopefully that means Windows repaired everything. Now I just need to find some time between exams to get this new hard drive… Thanks everyone!
Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this.
If the current problem is that the hard is simply not responding now and then, then moving your disk image to another drive would probably fix that.
But chances are that every time the drive screws up enough to blue-screen the system, it’s because it’s reading a corrupted file or has just corrupted another file. If this is the case, a disk image will retain that corruption, and although it probably won’t get worse, it won’t get better either. And it can get worse, if you’ve got corruption in a windows system file, it could cause continuing problems to occur as you access other files on the system. Usually in this case however, it just gives the BSOD and won’t execute that particular function at all.
I would do a clean install of Windows and re-install your applications if at all possible. If it’s not practical to do that, start with the disc image, then consider installing Windows in place and downloading all the updates again. This may fix a corruption in a windows system file. Make sure you have a backup first, of course.
Of course if your application program files or data files have been corrupted, they will need to be reinstalled or recreated no matter what you do with Windows.
Right now, since I’m at school until Christmas time, I’m hoping just to get something stable enough to last me until I can get my install discs. Would transferring stuff to a new hard drive make things better now? I assume I’ll have to get a new hard drive regardless, so either way I’ll have to do that, but ideally it would at least fix some of the problems, or at the least stop it from getting worse, right?
The pen is similar to a mechanical pencil but instead of lead it has fiberglass strands that are ideal for cleaning connectors. More than one service call has lasted less then the ten minutes it takes to clean a connector.
No way to say for sure because once files are corrupted there is no way to know exactly how they will act in a given situation. But chances are that yes, it would at least keep things from getting worse.