HD reads REAL slow, tic tic tic

[TomMWatson]

The best way to describe it is to describe the noise it makes when reading the HD. We all know the normal noise when the HD reads, but there are times when mine slows way down and just goes tic, tic, tic for about 30 seconds, the space between each tic is about 1 second. While this is happening, the screen freezes except that sometimes after each tic, a small change will appear on the screen. Is there a corrupt file it is trying to read? I have defragged twice, run scandisk twice and all is ok. Is there a program I can run that shows me what file the drive is reading so I can spot the possible corrupt file? I also have Norton AntiVirus so I don't think it's a virus. Thanks for any help, it's "driving" me nuts.

[Paleo Pete]

Check the Performance tab in Device Manager and see if it says some drives are running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode

More on MS-DOS Compatibility Mode here from Micro$oft.
{URL fixed by me --ixl}
If that's not it, get ready to replace the hard drive, sounds like it might be on its last legs.

Also use the F8 key to boot to Command Prompt Only[ and run scandisk from DOS.

scandisk c: /autofix /nosummary /surface will let you run an unattended scandisk and check the surface of the drive. Make note of the spaces in the command, they must be there. If it finds lots of bad clusters, the drive is going bad.

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[This message has been edited by ixl (edited 09-30-2000).]

[TomMWatson]

Thanks for all the tips. There is nothing running under MS-DOS Compatibility Mode. The scan check in ms-dos showed no errors. I tried something on my own that seems to have helped, I don't know why. Under System Properties/Performance/Advance Settings-FileSystem/Read Ahead Optimization I set to 'none'. The problem hasn't reoccurred yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thanks