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   
      
   Worn out drives and unreadable sectors due to physical damage aren't   
   repairable. So a drive replacement is the only option.   
      
   On platter based darddrive, unreadable sectors due to weak magnet may be   
   repairable by re-writing the sectors a few times (but not simply by filling   
   it with zeroes). Note that since there's no way to know if the unreadable   
   sectors are due to physical damage or weak magnet, it would be very risky to   
   attempt a repair without doing a backup first. Physical damage tend to   
   spread since platter surface particles may stick and build up to the   
   read/write head, and drag them along the surface tracks - severing the   
   problem.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)