Hello, I recently went out and bought several new components for my new system. I put it together and it worked flawleslly for a good month. Slowly but surely, upon booting up my system it requires that go through a rather long disk repair typically taking almost 2 hours. It's now at the point where I'm experiencing this almost every day. Even worse, my system has started to hang and freeze even when doing very simple operations like opening a browser or trying to access the start menu. Is this indicative of a bad drive or could be something with windows? -A

Check your system event log. That should help you decide just what's going wrong.To do this, click the Start orb, then right-click Computer, then choose Manage. Expand Event Viewer, expand Windows Logs, then click on System. Scroll through the entries. Generally, if there's a disk problem you'll see Error level log entries with Source Disk.Rest assured Windows does not regularly corrupt hard drives.-Noel

Run the Error Checking utility: Close all open files. Click Start, and then click My Computer. In the My Computer window, right-click the hard disk you want to search for bad sectors, and then click Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab. Click the Check Now button. In the Check Disk dialog box (called Error-checking in Windows 7), select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start. If bad sectors are found, choose to fix them. Tip: Only select the "Automatically fix file system errors" check box if you think that your disk contains bad sectors. This can also be done from the command line as chkdsk /f C: and Y to check at next reboot MCSE, MCSA, MCDST [If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]

Noel Carboni and cdobbs , thank you so much for your answers. Once my computer gets done with it's 2 hour long startup recovery I'll try those. :) Follow-up Questions: I'm thinking this might be a RAM issue as well. Is there a way within windows to check the RAM? My colleague instructed me to use the microsoft boot diag tool or "memtest" but I don't have a CD burner or a disk drive either. I can burn one while I'm at work tomorrow but for the time being, any ideas?

Hi,Well I tried both answers with some interesting results.I first ran the check disk I ran the check disk and it found a bad sector(s). Here is a screenshot:]http://i.imagehost.org/0872/Capture.pngI then went and checked the error log and found hundreds if not thousands of disk errors. It appears that every other second there is a disk error. Most if not all the errors state:"The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block."So is the hanging, freezing, pausing, and unstable computer I'm experiencing probably the result of harddrive problems? How do I go about fixing this? Could be the RAM too?

Here's what I've had to do when confronted with disk errors:Get a good full system backup while the drive is still functioning. It's possible you may be able to get most or all the data off it. Then replace the drive. There is no fixing these things.Once you've gotten the hard drive replaced, restore your backup, and you may also want to reinstall Windows, just to be sure no system files have been corrupted. After that, check for other system problems.Most computers check their RAM during power-up via the BIOS (the screen that appears shortly just after power is turned on). There may be a key you can press at that time to get into the BIOS menu, to effect a more thorough set of diagnostics. It's also possible that the manufacturer of your computer supplied a disc of diagnostics.-Noel