From: jj4public@vfemail.net   
      
   On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 01:14:46 +0100, Bj��m wrote:   
   > I got a booting problem on my Acer Xp-machine that I don't understand,   
   > and I have had for over half a  year. Which has led me to abandon the   
   > machine for most of the time, since it is almost impossible to get   
   > through.   
   >   
   > It may have something to to with the boot disk being almost full? It   
   > is a 200 Gb disk, and when the problem started it had maybe less than   
   > 2Gb free, even 1Gb. The exact number, I'm not shure of. Currently I   
   > had about 10 Gb space when I last booted, and have been able to remove   
   > 3 more since then.   
   >   
   > I'm keeping the machine on for a week at a time, thus avoiding the   
   > booting process, cause it's a real pain trying to boot. Once it's up   
   > and running there is no problems at all it seems, rock steady. So why   
   > is it so hard to boot?   
   >   
   > What happens when I try to boot is this:   
   > -Going through BIOS ok,   
   > -Windows start up image showing, loging in,   
   > -Windows final background with icons coming up partly - but   
   > having come partly through the number of icons showing up one after   
   > the other slowly, about 10-20 seconds or earlier into this process, it   
   > crashes then tries to reboot!   
   >   
   > The system then gets into the blue screen and wants to check the file   
   > system for consequence. It does not seem to have any bad effect to   
   > skip this process by my choice (as it takes a whole 10 minutes), but I   
   > do it once in a while to 'clean up' the disk.   
   > I have to do this partly booting cycle up to 20-30 times before the   
   > system is able to boot properly. Sometimes I just give up and abandon   
   > it. I have gotten into the habit of being very quick to log in as I   
   > have possibly found a connection of being fast in this process and a   
   > successful boot. With the progressing number of boot tries, there   
   > seems to be a slowly (but slightly erratic) increasing number of   
   > seconds into the process of icons appearing. Once you get pst 30-40   
   > seconds into the icons, a successful booting will ensue. But as   
   > mentioned, this may take 20-30 tries or more!   
   >   
   > An added problem is that I have a second disk attached, and going   
   > through this constant rebooting, I'm fairly nervous this whole thing   
   > may wreck that disk. Another reason to avoid it all.   
   > I have removed many icons, putting them into folders, but the problem   
   > persists. It is possible this has diminished the problem, but not   
   > shure about that..   
   > I have also removed most of the elements of the automatic start up   
   > programs in the Boot-folder.   
   >   
   > Any suggestions to what is going on here and a remedy for it?   
   >   
   > Bjørn Sørheim   
      
   The slowness could be due to worn out harddrive, either SSD or platter   
   based. Or if it's a new platter based harddrive but got bumped hard enough   
   to damage the platter surface or the read/write head(s).   
      
   When the read/write operations fails, both the hardware and the OS will   
   attempt to retry the operation a number of times, which produces delay. e.g.   
   If the hardware has 2 read/write retries and the OS has 4 retries, the   
   maximum number of retries would be 8 (a total of 9 attempts). If the   
   unreadable sectors are not severe enough, the read/write operation may   
   succeed at last retries (retry #8). i.e. not severe enough to fail the   
   operation so that the OS can mark the cluster as bad.   
      
   You may want to use a harddisk tool that can read its SMART log (see   
   bottom). See these log entries.   
      
   - Read error rate.   
   - Seek error rate.   
   - Spin retry count. (during PC power up or on waking up after sleep)   
   - Recalibration retries.   
   - Write error rate.   
      
   Note that some harddrives support only some of the log types.   
      
   Try CrystalDiskInfo to read the SMART log.   
      
   http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)