There are many scenarios where your computer may be acting flaky. Often times hours can be saved by checking the hard drive for bad sectors. This is the reason DTI data Recovery is offering this full version freeware utility - Windows Surface Scanner.
Windows Surface Scanner Documentation. This software will read each sector of a physical drive that is currently mounted on an XP, Vista, or Windows 7 operating system. Each sector is examined for a read error. If a read error occurs the error counter will increment.
Download Windows Surface Scanner here
Windows Surface Scanner Fast Start Guide:
- Press the 'Mount' button. That will query your system for all physical drives currently mounted. Once found a list will be presented to you with check boxes next to each drive. You may only choose on drive at a time to scan.
- Use the check boxes to the left of the drive to indicate which drive you wish to have the software scan. Once again, only one drive may be scanned at a time.
- Press the 'Scan' button. This will start the surface scan of the currently selected drive. As the scan progresses the progress bar will move forward and a percent indicator above the progress bar will be incremented. A 'Sector' counter will be incremented to give you an indication that the software is indeed scanning the surface of your drive. In addition there is a 'Time' indicator that will give you an estimate as to the time remaining for the current scan. This time can fluctuate if there are several or just a few bad sectors on the drive.
Lastly, there is an 'Error' indicator. This indicator will increment every time the software encounters a bad sector.