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Old 2014-05-11, 20:50   Link #1
tugatosmk
1982 tuga
 
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Portugal
Some programs now freeze after mid-boot force shutdown

The title may be confusing but it's still better than "My PC is going bananas".


I don't have much computer knowledge, I get by. So bear with me with some of my statements you may find weird or incorrect.


My PC, bought in late 2011 with Windows 7, has only one internal Seagate 500GB HDD; after only 7 months it failed the "reallocated sector count". On that day Windows wouldn't start up because of the main error, but after like 7 more reboot attempts somehow I managed to start up Windows. Then the program "HD Tune Pro" confirmed the error I wrote.

Since then I keep backup of all important documents in external HDDs, fearing the internal HDD could brake down at any moment. But the HDD managed to keep working without any major issues ever since.


But two weeks, something happened.
(As a background: I have installed for months quite a while the program "Smart Defrag 3" from IOBit software. One of the options it has is to "defrag the boot system" before Windows start up, in order to theoretically improve boot speed.)

One day I started the computer and decided mid-way of that defrag boot to force shutdown the PC via the main tower button. I always thought it was only bad to force shutdown during boot if the Windows start-up is already in progress, not before.

Apparently I was wrong, because on the next boot up new disk errors appeared, similar to what happened some time ago. Here are the photos I took of the incident (my Windows is the Portuguese version):

http://500px.com/photo/70181421/unti...m=user_library
http://500px.com/photo/70181423/unti...m=user_library
http://500px.com/photo/70181425/unti...m=user_library

Like the other previous incident, after several more attempts I somehow managed to enter Windows again, but only to find out that some of my most used programs started to freeze everytime single time I opened them.

The programs were, so far:

- Google Talk
- SUPER
- ACDSee Pro 5
- AllSync v10
- utorrent 3.4.1

Reinstalling the programs didn't fix the problem, they still crash. Not even other version, neither older or newer. The only exception is utorrent, I luckily had a previous version of it on my laptop, the 3.2 version and it works somehow...


Is all this a registry problem? Has my Win7 got heavily corrupted? I have no idea...
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Old 2014-05-13, 12:51   Link #2
-KarumA-
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: In Maya world, where all is 3D and everything crashes
Age: 36
Okay lets get this first out of the way, the news is not good.

1. A defragging program to let your computer start up faster that does it at every boot, do not fall for that ever again. Next time you have a computer type in when you go to Start -> Ms config there you can set which programs boot up when your computer starts. Everything you don't need and use turn it off and your computer can start up quicker. You don't need to defrag every single time, nothing much changes over night or in a week, it is not needed on such a regular basis.

Now defragging simply means; the programs you run, your OS everything is put into sectors of your HD, sometimes there is some lose space between them and so in order to make free some harddisc space everything gets pushed together and moved in bits.

Now the bad thing and I don't know why you would ever shut down mid way but never do that again. You cut down the moving part of the defragging, basically bits of your OS, programs anything is still on its original sector on your harddisc and others are somewhere else. It cannot find the entire thing so it creates an error because it is incomplete.

Like a puzzle that when completed it is nice to look at but now lets say many of the pieces are lost somewhere and you can't see the whole picture.

Your programs are damaged because of the loss of data and your OS could have pieces lost in the sectors as well. And so to be certain things are properly placed I would suggest a full reinstall of your OS and programs. This because it could be that pieces of the OS itself are lost as well which can cause problems in the long run.

You could try reinstalling the corrupt programs, if it can find where the missing pieces are when it uninstalls.

Thirdly it could have caused damage to your harddisc so never ever do that again and don't sue that defrag at boot.
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Old 2014-05-14, 16:12   Link #3
Jaden
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Yeah, what he said. If you forcefully interrupt a defrag process, some data on the hard drive gets corrupted. This could cause all kinds of errors. I don't think you can break the actual disk that way, though. If you formatted it and reinstalled windows and everything, it should be 100% back to normal. Maybe you can also get away with just reinstalling the corrupted programs.
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Old 2014-05-15, 01:45   Link #4
Renegade334
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Nun'yabiznehz
Age: 38
You can't break the disk, but I once managed to bust my PSU because of repeated, forced power cycles (caused, I discovered later afterwards, by the thermal paste on the CPU being thinned out after I replaced the heat sink and the chip inevitably overheating). Systems are supposed to have crash mitigation nowadays, but don't test your luck.

If you have your Windows 7 installation DVD (although, from what you wrote, it appears you bought your PC with W7 pre-installed - correct me if I'm wrong) with you, you can always boot up from it and order a system repair. It'll only restore the Windows 7 files to their original state, though (which means that anything you got from Windows Update, maybe even SP1 depending on what's being repaired, will need to be redownloaded - and in the meantime, the difference in file versions could cause additional issues).

The other third-party programs (7-zip, WinRAR, Word, etc) that are also missing some bits here and there will still require installation, so at that point you're better off reinstalling everything. Clean slate.

But then if you haven't bought W7 separately and don't have an installation DVD, it might be a bit trickier.
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Last edited by Renegade334; 2014-05-15 at 02:34.
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Old 2014-05-15, 12:40   Link #5
sa547
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Age: 47
@tugatosmk: do you use an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), or have the PC directly plugged into the outlet? If it's the latter, then you really have a problem because power surges will slowly kill your hardware.
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Old 2014-06-03, 10:53   Link #6
tugatosmk
1982 tuga
 
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Portugal
(Sorry I was away for so long, I had troubles changing my password as required by animesuki.)

Thak you all for your help.

About my decision on that fateful day, what can I say... basically I woke up early that day and for some reason I decided to force shutdown... Now I realize that was a terrible mistake.

My brother - who knows a LOT more about computers than me - gave me a Win7 ISO (not my installation disk , the OME thingy or something...) to try and repair Windows 7, although from what he told me it probably won't do much, and you all might agree... I'm still worried it might go wrong, hence my hesitation in trying the repair...
I even thought of cloning the disk, but that will also cloning the current Windows errors, right?

I really should have done it before the failure... that and a normal system backup (now I learned mt lesson ).

The way I see it I'll probably have to reinstall Windows 7 and all the software manually. What bothers me even more is that I was about to buy an HD video capture card and a second internal HDD.
Then I thought of replacing my current first HDD (the one that gave "reallocated sector count" error only 6 months after buying the PC, WAY before this mistake of mine).
What do you think, should I still use it to reinstall Win7? Is this error a "minor" error? I have to admit, this HDD has been working fine since that error but I'm still afraid it will break at any moment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sa547 View Post
@tugatosmk: do you use an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), or have the PC directly plugged into the outlet? If it's the latter, then you really have a problem because power surges will slowly kill your hardware.
I don't have UPS, fortunately grid power failures (brownouts?) have become a thing of the past, the last time it happened was over 3 years ago, I think. I live in an apartment building, so my faster usually checks the outlets voltage for the 220~230 V value and so far there hasn't been any prolonged power surges.

Rapid power spikes, however, sometimes happen, but it's rare. Does it really harm Windows that much? Over the 23 years of having PCs in this apartment these rare small power surges happened but all other Windows on the previous PCs never had this kind of error, even my current father PC with Windows Vista.
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Old 2014-06-03, 18:36   Link #7
Jaden
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Yeah, cloning will not fix the corruption, only reinstallation will.

All HDDs develop some bad sectors sooner or later. Unless they are constantly increasing, I don't think you need to worry about it breaking that soon.
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Old 2014-09-21, 13:54   Link #8
tugatosmk
1982 tuga
 
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Portugal
Just wanting to post that after all this time, and having done nothing to fix the problem, my Windows has miraculously cured itself. The affected programs are now working just like before, even the win7 mini-aplications.

Why? I have no idea. Pure luck, I guess. I just hope it remains this way. :P
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