I might have a problem

[Avaris]

Alright, my computer is starting to act fairly strange right now. When I booted up, it crashed twice (leaving a black screen with no mouse icon, and no activity), and all of the applications (UT, CSS) are booting up very slowly. Any suggestions?

Edit: I did a system scan earlier, though I haven't done a spyware search.

[pewterdragn]

Check Event Log / Event Viewer

[Yrrek]

Did it give you a memory error? What happened when the computer crashed? Did it just restart on its own?

[nonstop]

smells of a hard drive or psu problem.

[Houdini]

smells of a hard drive or psu problem.

agreed first thought was the PSU what you got? Also what Drag said see if their is a record of what happened.

[Porkinator]

Sounds more like a power supply problem or you may have a virus
of some type.
Hard drives make clicking noises when failing.

[pewterdragn]

I'm more concerned with HDD or software then power... apps wouldn't load slower if it was PSU but would be more "flaky".... unless the power was *just* out of spec which the logs would tell you.

HDD can fail without a sound. The clicking is telling of a mechanical failure with the actuator arm or spindle. Other causes of HDD include power, circuit board, etc... although those failures tend to be more dramatic and you probably couldn't use the system.

Get at those logs
if you don't know how run this from the Start/Run menu:

Code: Select all

eventvwr

Look through System and Application logs for errors.

Also, it would be a good idea to get a list of whats running on your system and your memory/cpu usage and also run a third party virus scanner... if you think you might be infected you can't trust even your security software. Try this if you think you might be infected: http://www.trendmicro.com/hc_intro/default.asp

[Avaris]

I'm starting to think it might be with my hardware overheating. I noticed yesterday (which was somewhat warmer), it was having problems. The colder it is, the better it will perform (that's a given), up to a certain point. It might also be with one of my hard drives, as pewter said. The PSU I haven't had a problem with yet, so that's out.

I did find this, viewing the system logs:
"The System Restore filter encountered the unexpected error '0xC0000034' while processing the file '~efe2.tmp' on the volume 'HarddiskVolume1'. It has stopped monitoring the volume."