Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Two hard drives are having the exact same problem

Apr 12, 2015 12:57PM PDT

I put together a computer for my mom last August. Since we have had problems with hard drives going out, I installed two hard drives, both with windows 7 and the same programs and documents. That way if something went wrong with one hard drive, she could just boot from the other hard drive.

Yesterday, something strange happened with her hard drive. It's sporadic, but at times programs won't open, and once opened, sometimes clicking the X won't close them. Right clicking to close on the taskbar sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. If both those fail, it's a CTR-ALT-DEL to close anything down.

Also the Windows 7 desktop icons can no longer be moved around, no matter what view setting is used. I like to have those icons where I want them, and I like to move them around, but cannot do that.

Then there is a Google Chrome problem. I cannot get to the settings for Chrome. Clicking the Settings icon does nothing. Also when I click on a tab to get to that tab from another tab, it instead closes the tab. Basically the tabs close no matter where you click on them now. The only way to get to a new tab is to do a CTRL-TAB. I uninstalled and reinstalled Chrome, which didn't help.

All of this stuff just all of a sudden began happening. No problem though, because I have another hard drive installed and all ready to go, so I booted it up with that hard drive. Surprise, surprise, surprise -- that hard drive is doing the exact same thing, which leaves me at a complete loss as to what the problem may be. Obviously it isn't a hard drive or Windows problem since it is happening on both hard drives.

HELP! Does anyone know which piece of hardware may be causing this problem? Also in the Control Panel, System, Device Manager, there are NO warnings about anything there. I am totally stumped. I have never seen anything like this before and could use any help or advice anyone may have.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
how old the computer?
Apr 12, 2015 1:26PM PDT

This is classic symptom of data corruption caused by bad RAM, which in turn is due to normal failure or voltage spikes from failing capacitors. If the computer is more than 5 years old and has the older ESL type capacitors, then that could be the failing of it all.

Google "bad caps" and also check images on it.

If it's just failing RAM, that will cause bad writes to the drives and weird things begin to randomly happen.

- Collapse -
Thank You!!!
Apr 12, 2015 4:22PM PDT

If these are classic symptoms of bad RAM, then that must be her problem. Now as far as whether her motherboard is over five years old, I don't think the store would sell me one that old, would they? I'm not at her place right now and she can't find her receipt, but I put together her computer in August 2014. The year before in May 2013, I put together one for my brother, and I'm pretty sure it is about the same as hers. His receipt shows this for the motherboard, cpu, and ram. It makes no sense to me, but maybe it does to you.

Item: cpu-1155-3220-i3, Description: Core i3 3220 3.3G 3M x0426
Item: mb-1155-asu-034, Description: E:P8B75-M LE DD3 AVL mATX a0506
Item: m-133-04g-c, Description: 4G DDR3 PC10600 133 3MHz Crucial c0430

Those are the parts for my brother's computer put together in May 2013, but I'm pretty sure when I went back to the store in August 2014, I told them I wanted the same thing, or something similar, to put together her computer. I know she has an ASUS motherboard, and since I wanted the same thing as my brother's, it could be that motherboard listed above.

I guess what I'm wondering is if it isn't bad caps that caused the RAM to go bad, then what else could it be? Also, unlike my brother's computer, my mother's computer has 8G of RAM, so it's possible that she has two 4G sticks in there. Perhaps just one stick is bad, so I'm going to try each one individually and see how the computer reacts. She can operate on 4G of RAM, so if it's just one stick that's bad, I'll remove it.

If both sticks are bad, or if she just has an 8G stick, then if I'm replacing the RAM, I probably should also replace the motherboard too, wouldn't you think? No sense taking the chance of it ruining more RAM. I really appreciate your help. It gives me a place to start. I guess I always thought if a stick of RAM went bad, it just wouldn't register. You have enlightened me, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

- Collapse -
Those are good parts
Apr 12, 2015 11:23PM PDT

What can cause good RAM to go bad? Well, recently I had 3 good USB wifi devices burn on a daughter's computer. Turned out reason was voltage fluctuation from the PSU (power unit). Meter showed it steady once all had warmed up a couple minutes, discovered the fluctuation was ONLY at startup when the biggest load was demanded, the 12V would spike to 24V and waver back and forth and finally settle back to 12V. Something like that can also affect RAM or other parts. Bad data on one drive may mean a bad drive, but bad data on 2 drives at the same time means input is bad and that comes back to the drives from the RAM. What is making the RAM do that is the question. Is the RAM bad, or is there a power problem such as ripple effect (during bad capacitor days) or voltage spikes?

Even good, new equipment can go bad after surges during storms or any other event which causes such. Is her electrical service of good quality where she lives? It's not always easy to track the cause down. However, with 2 drives having same problem at same time, something is corrupting the data that either already on it (which affects program files a lot more than usual) or affecting the "writes" going back to the drive from the RAM (which means documents and other files saved are hurt, but less so programs files which are often only "read" into RAM).

- Collapse -
Maybe a new power supply too?
Apr 13, 2015 5:00AM PDT

First of all, your comment that "documents and other files saved are hurt" was rather chilling. I guess the first thing I am going to do is unplug the second hard drive so I can at least preserve that. So far all I'm noticing is problems with windows and programs, thank goodness.

I don't know if her electrical service is of good quality, since all I know is if I have electricity, that's good. She happens to live in the basement of my brother's house though, and his computer is just fine, so I don't think that is the problem.

The problem is my mom! These things are constantly happening to her for some reason. That's the reason she has an emergency hard drive. And honestly, I know little about computers. I can put a motherboard in a case, and add a processor and RAM, and everything else and get it working, but that's about it. My uncle once screamed at me that I know just enough about computers to be dangerous as he worked to fix whatever mess I had made 20 years ago.

From what you wrote, I take it this could also be a power supply problem that has caused the RAM to go bad? You know what? I'm just taking the box into the store where I bought all the parts and have them check it out to tell me what is bad. If I'm lucky, they'll replace the parts free of charge. Okay, that's going a bit far, but I can always dream. But I know they have the equipment there to check things out, such as a bad power supply, or bad capacitors, so at this point, it appears that is the best thing for me to do.

But I'm still going to open it up when I get back over to my mom's later today and check out the RAM. If she has two sticks, I want to see if both are bad. She's still using the computer (with difficulty), so I'll leave it running until I can find time to get to this store. But I definitely will unplug the second drive so the files on that aren't damaged now that you've put that thought in my head.

You've been a tremendous help pointing me in the right direction to getting the problem fixed. I was totally stumped as to what to do next, and now thanks to you, I know what to do next, and I really appreciate it. Plus I've learned a few things along the way! I cannot thank you enough. Thank you!