Free Technical Support And Advice

A bad sector is like a physical defect on the surface of the HDD. This is an area that has issues when the drives head tries to read/write data on this sector. Symptoms can include minor crashes to the system failing to boot. The main factor here is how much of the disk is unreadable and what data was stored on those areas.

You cannot restore damaged areas of the disk without replacing the drive. Windows has a tool built in that is designed to scan your drives and detected physical errors like this. The tool is called CHKDSK (Previously called scan disk with windows 9x systems)

CHKDSK will mark the bad sectors on the HDD unusable so that your OS knows not to store any data on this area of the HDD.

The blue screen of death commonly referred to as the blue screen error has always been a factor of all Microsoft operating systems since Windows 3.1. There are several issues that can cause a bsod, a faulty memory stick can cause your PC to blue screen, faulty hard drive is another culprit. It is one of the most dreaded error messages as it brings your entire system to a halt.

Not ALL blue screen error codes mean that your HDD is about to die or you need your memory replacing. Sometimes Windows displays this error when it fails to recover from a serious error or when a system process is halted to save itself from a major error.

Since there's several factors that could cause the bsod its sometimes hard to track down. Best way to diagnose a bsod error is through the process of elimination. Download and run Memtest86 from a removable pen drive. Memtest will write data to all the banks in your memory modules and read this back to verify their integrity. Let this run through a few times to ensure that your memory is error free.

Each HDD will have its own diagnostic tools that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website. For Seagate HDD the tool is Seatools. I recommend using the manufacturer's tools as there normally free and are built for diagnosing that particular brand of HDD. If you want to go a step further you could purchase a PC hardware diagnostic tool. Some good ones I have used include IOLO System Mechanic which is run in windows and PC Check which is DOS based.

RAM stand for Random Access Memory. Is it a vital part of every PC that is used to hold data and files on a temporary basis. When you first switch on your PC your computer starts to load your operating system. It does this by transferring the files needed into the RAM.

You can check how much memory you have installed in Windows by going to System properties in control panel.

If you don't have enough memory installed you will often run into errors informing you that your system has run out of resources. What important to remember here is that Microsoft's recommended spec is ONLY to run that OS. They don't factor in that users will often want to do more than browse files and play Solitaire. Always remember when you purchase a piece of Hardware or Software check the spec.

Since every system is different it's hard to know what memory is compatible for each motherboard. If you need a memory upgrade then I suggest that you try Crucial.com

Crucial has a huge database of motherboard models and can easily tell you what memory is compatible with your system.

Error Codes have been a part of Windows since the beginning. An error code is when an opperation fails and the software will try and tell you why. Error codes were originally designed for the developers of the software so they could better understand where the opperation failed to rectify the problem.

You dont have to try and understand every error codes, sometimes they really dont make heads or tails of the problem that the users experiencing. The easiest step you can take when you receive an unkonwn error code is to do a Google search on this and look through the results. Its very lickely that other users have experiencined the same error and have managed to rectify the problem.

Error codes are normally reconised by numbers or a string of numbers and letters.

Some Microsoft error codes are very informal but you can get some sort of an idea what the code means by the number that is displays

Error codes 15 to 31 generally mean one of your system files is corrupt.
Error codes above 1024 are generally from non microsoft prgrams
Error codes 400 to 500 can indicate problems with PC maintenance

I'm sure almost every user has seen this screen before. You're working on an important document for your Boss. You click on save and nothing appears to happen, After waiting anxiously after a few minutes the program appears to have crashed leaving you with the option of ending the program and losing all your unsaved changes or waiting to see if the program will recover.

Unfortunately there's no specific reason for a program crashing. Sometimes you received this error when your system is in a bad state. Running CHKDSK and disk Defragmenter can resolve but don't be disappointed if it doesn't.

Failing this I would next recommend you scan your PC for Spyware and Adware. These are programs that install themselves onto your computer often without your permission, collect personal data and send these to 3rd parties.

There are a many free programs that will scan and remove infections from your PC for free. I would recommend using Malware Bytes, It's free to use and it does a good job. There's new definitions released for Malware Bytes daily so make sure you update regularly.

Watch out for Fake Spyware removal programs, there are some programs out there that try and trick the user to download which in fact are spyware. If you're ever unsure do a Google search on the program, if its legitimate then there will be plenty of info and reviews on the program in question.