Several weeks ago, during a clear, bright day, my electricity dimmed or browned out three times in quick succession. I wasn't personally on line at the time but my computer was turned on and connected to the internet. As soon as I realized what was happening I immediately shut it down. I started having problems immediately and now it has been getting worse. The symptoms are:

EVERY time I power up it goes into the Chkdsk mode unless I hit a key within ten seconds. Once in the Chkdsk it gets to about 50% done and then completely freezes up and I have to initiate manual shutdown to restart. I tried letting it run overnight one time but in the morning it was still at 50%.

Sometimes when shutting down it will just run forever and not shut down unless I hold down the Power button until it stops. Occasionally if I leave it idle for a while it will also freeze up.

I keep getting HTTP Server Error 502 when logging on to Verizon Central.

Most frustrating of all, my printer/scanner no longer sends scans to my computer. I can print from the computer but nothing will go the other way. It will say "HPScan.exe Corrupt File Chkdsk". This sucks because I had just started submitting CR's to improve the database after finally learning how to do so and now nothing.

At the time of the incident I had a disc for Civilization III in and sometimes now I have problems starting the game, I don't know if that is related.

I would love any help or advice and please keep in mind that my computer skills are only marginally better than that of your average Amish person so I don't know all of the correct jargon and I am a little slower catching on sometimes. I would greatly appreciate any help. I can even offer a trade - comics for tech support!

Thank you all for any aid you can offer.
Howie

---

If you shop with Hall of Heroes you can expect quality comics, great customer service, fast shipping and an open line of communication. Plus, all comics get bagged and boarded and are shipped in a sturdy cardboard box! I will now let my 400+ Hero Ratings speak for themselves. Thanks! I'm looking forward to helping you expand your own collections!

International Buyers check out my competitive shippng rates!

Yes, there has been a high-pitched whirring sound at times that makes it seem like the computer is struggling. I did attempt to do a system restore at one point but for some reason it would never start.

It is an HP Pavilion that I got a few years ago from one of the big box stores and it was pretty much a plug in-and-go model. I didn't really have to do much to install it myself.

I do not have access to another PC, although I can still use my girlfriends laptop when needed. I also don't have another drive.

---

If you shop with Hall of Heroes you can expect quality comics, great customer service, fast shipping and an open line of communication. Plus, all comics get bagged and boarded and are shipped in a sturdy cardboard box! I will now let my 400+ Hero Ratings speak for themselves. Thanks! I'm looking forward to helping you expand your own collections!

International Buyers check out my competitive shippng rates!

Thank you very much. I will try that and let you know what happens.
Thanks!
Howie

---

If you shop with Hall of Heroes you can expect quality comics, great customer service, fast shipping and an open line of communication. Plus, all comics get bagged and boarded and are shipped in a sturdy cardboard box! I will now let my 400+ Hero Ratings speak for themselves. Thanks! I'm looking forward to helping you expand your own collections!

International Buyers check out my competitive shippng rates!

Index errors usually mean the filesystem, but not necessarily the disk itself, has some issues.

let's try one more time to make it fix what's wrong. Do you have a light on the PC that flickers when there is disk activity? It's typically red or blue, but may be a different color. it should usually be "off" when the pc is just sitting idle, and should start flickering a lot -turning almost solid at times when you are actively doing things on the machine.

Run this command (same way I mentioned for the first time, just new options this time - again, recommend you run this in the night/down hours, as it will take a while)

"CHKDSK C: /F /V /R"

this is probably going to get "stuck" at 50%, the key is - if your disk activity light is blowing up, then it's not stuck :)

For what it's worth, my wife's new laptop drive had a few issues and it took 6 or so hours to fully scan and repair and that's with only maybe 50GB used on it.

OK, so here's what happened. After I typed in the command it started out well. It actually got past the part where it had frozen up before. It was saying something about a lot of "Orphaned Files" and it seemed like it was fixing things. Once it went into the fifth of five stages it started scanning Clusters? I went to bed when it was at about 11 or 12 % and when I got up this morning it had frozen on 15%. I saw the light you were talking about, mine is orange. It was lit up a lot at first but this morning it was not on at all.

Today it's been acting odd, at first there were 100+ updates to install and it has frozen up once or twice.

---

If you shop with Hall of Heroes you can expect quality comics, great customer service, fast shipping and an open line of communication. Plus, all comics get bagged and boarded and are shipped in a sturdy cardboard box! I will now let my 400+ Hero Ratings speak for themselves. Thanks! I'm looking forward to helping you expand your own collections!

International Buyers check out my competitive shippng rates!

Just out of curiosity, do you ever defrag your HD?

---

It doesn't matter if it's 50 Cents or 50 Dollars - if you list it as NM it better be NM.
Xylob's Most Wanted:

G.I.Joe Special Missions TPB 2
Tales from the Transformers Beast Wars: Critical Mass
Youngblood Bloodsport #2

Need help with a Change Request?Click here to contact an approver!

Problems with CCL?
Send an email right away (don't delay!) to helpdesk@comiccollectorlive.com
615-264-4747
Offices are open M-F 8am-5pm Central Time.
You can also e-mail the Chief Brand Officer directly to try to resolve questions/stuff at steve@golocomedia.com for help with password resets, general customer service questions, store order resolution, credit card store updating, questions about comic books and CCL, etc...

Defragmenting your hard drive manages the file system and helps your computer run faster when accessing/writing to the hard drive.
Not Norton - that's anti-virus/security software.

Windows has a crap defragger built in that is at least better than nothing.
How often you need to defrag depends on what you use your PC for and how much you use it, but at least once a month could have possibly prevented some of the issues you're currently experiencing.
As the files on a hard drive become increasingly fragmented (spread out across the drive in "random" places) the more you run the risk of damage to the hard drive from working MUCH harder than it needs to as well as data corruption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Defragmenter_(Windows)

PCs are just like cars - you gotta do regular maintenance on 'em. If you let them down, they will let you down.

---

It doesn't matter if it's 50 Cents or 50 Dollars - if you list it as NM it better be NM.
Xylob's Most Wanted:

G.I.Joe Special Missions TPB 2
Tales from the Transformers Beast Wars: Critical Mass
Youngblood Bloodsport #2

Need help with a Change Request?Click here to contact an approver!

Problems with CCL?
Send an email right away (don't delay!) to helpdesk@comiccollectorlive.com
615-264-4747
Offices are open M-F 8am-5pm Central Time.
You can also e-mail the Chief Brand Officer directly to try to resolve questions/stuff at steve@golocomedia.com for help with password resets, general customer service questions, store order resolution, credit card store updating, questions about comic books and CCL, etc...

close any/all programs that are running including anything minimized or 'in the background' like outlook or other email. close everything.
go to "My Computer" and right-click your hard drive
select properties
on the "General" tab there is a "Disk Cleanup" button that can be immensly helpful - if you're going to do this, do it BEFORE you defrag. be patient, it could take a while
on the "Tools" tab click the "Defragment Now" button under the "Defragmentation" area
when the defrag program opens you can click "Analyze" to see how badly your hard drive is fragmented, or just click the "Defragment" button which will run analyze first, then it will defrag. It will probably take quite some time to complete.

NOTE: running a defrag on a damaged but still funcitoning hard drive can ruin it!
It would be like forcing somebody who is exhausted to get up a run a marathon.
defrag is a maintenance tool, not a repair tool. if your hard drive is undamaged this will probably make a big difference in how fast certain aspects of your computer run (based on your previous comments), but if the hard drive is damaged in any way you might be screwed - if chkdsk couldn't even complete, a defrag may be a lost cause at this point.

I'd buy a new hard drive, pull the old one out and do a fresh install of Windows on the new one, then once you've got Windows up and running install the old drive as a slave and pull all your files off to the new drive.
then you could reformat the old drive and see what condition it's in from there - it could make a fine storage/back-up drive.

---

It doesn't matter if it's 50 Cents or 50 Dollars - if you list it as NM it better be NM.
Xylob's Most Wanted:

G.I.Joe Special Missions TPB 2
Tales from the Transformers Beast Wars: Critical Mass
Youngblood Bloodsport #2

Need help with a Change Request?Click here to contact an approver!

Problems with CCL?
Send an email right away (don't delay!) to helpdesk@comiccollectorlive.com
615-264-4747
Offices are open M-F 8am-5pm Central Time.
You can also e-mail the Chief Brand Officer directly to try to resolve questions/stuff at steve@golocomedia.com for help with password resets, general customer service questions, store order resolution, credit card store updating, questions about comic books and CCL, etc...

You guys are awesome!

Not at my computer right now, I'm at my girlfriends house. I know that it is an HP Pavilion, not sure about the model number. I also don't know what SATA connections are. I can find out tomorrow when I'm back at my house.

Thanks very much!

---

If you shop with Hall of Heroes you can expect quality comics, great customer service, fast shipping and an open line of communication. Plus, all comics get bagged and boarded and are shipped in a sturdy cardboard box! I will now let my 400+ Hero Ratings speak for themselves. Thanks! I'm looking forward to helping you expand your own collections!

International Buyers check out my competitive shippng rates!