fatbottoms

I too am running the latest firefox 12. Typing in firefox.exe -p in the start search box will allow you to create a new profile which I've done before, but it didn't seem to make a difference before I did the reinstall of firefox. It seems like whenever I do a reinstall of firefox, it seems to run fine initially, but inevitably over time, it seems to slow down with each subsequent update. I think it's a compatibility issue with add-ons not being able to keep up with the frequent firefox updates. Within the past year or so, since firefox 4 was released on 3-22-11, they have updated 16 times. With each new release, they claim improvements in speed and features, but if it becomes incompatible with the add-ons, it's kind of futile. The reason people use firefox is for the customization, and if the creators of add-ons can't keep up with the too frequent updates, it's going to cause problems. And I've had problems with flash also...sometimes I'll see a "install flash" message in a video box before it finally loads the video in the box, and.I've got a decent connection with around 25mbps.

How ironic that after I post to say everything's fine with my hd, I get a blue screen error message saying my nvidia graphics encountered a problem and Windows has to shut down. I use my hdtv as my monitor, and when I unplugged everything to use the laptop in an another room, I got the blue screen after I opened my laptop. I've never had this happen to me before, and hopefully it's just anomaly...maybe I should shut down my laptop before I unplug everything when I need to use it in another room. As for the paging file, I increased the size to 4221 min. and 8442 max and it's difficult to tell, but it seems to have increased the speed of my browser just a little bit. I noticed in the the performance tab in task manager, the memory seems to have increased to 1.1gb whereas before the increase in page file, it was around 1gb. And for the pipelining, I have messed around with the about config before, and it doesn't make a difference...it's currently set to false. I think the firefox problem is a combination of incompatibility with add-ons and firefox becoming bloated with too many changes. I definitely notice the problem with yahoo mail which I use, and I often have to just close the email tab and reopen again. I have 3 add-ons with firefox (adblock plus, tabmix plus, and firegestures), and I think the conflict lies with tabmix plus. When I open my firefox browser, it is set to open with the last saved session which usually has quiet a few tabs in it, and before the reinstall of firefox, I was constantly having to clear my cache to reload my yahoo email page. While this doesn't happen as often, I still sometimes have to reload the yahoo email, and now clearing the cache won't make a difference, I have to close the tab and reopen a new tab for yahoo email. Yahoo in general has become a fat bloated heifer and their email which used to be the cleanest, most legible layout has become cluttered mess now...thank god, I still have the old classic yahoo email layout.

With tech advances today, my laptop isn't current, but it's not that old. I bought it about 3 years ago, and it's got plenty of ram: HP G60-120us 2.0ghz dual core, 3 gigs of ram, 250gb hd, windows 7 Ultimate, and about 100gb of free space. As for the slow browser, I think the fault lies with firefox. Before I did the reinstall of firefox, it was constantly getting stuck on web pages, endlessly loading and taking forever, but using other browsers like ie and chrome, they had no problem loading the same pages. Granted, I don't have the other browsers customized with add-ons like I do with firefox, but ever since they started updating their browsers frequently like once a month, I've been having problems...I would switch to google chrome in a second, if I could get the same add-ons I have with firefox. About the page file, is there a size you should allocate for your virtual memory? I just have it set to automatically manage page file, and it's set at 2814mb right now.

Well, it's been a couple of months since I posted this about my smart failure hd, and I'm happly to say that the laptop and hd is still doing very well. I even spent 20.00 to get a new battery for the laptop from Amazon. I've had issues with the firefox browser taking forever to load pages, but doing a reinstall seems to have fixed the problems...with all their updates, firefox just seems to get slower and more bogged down. I almost wish the laptop would die already so I can get a new laptop.

Yes, I feel fortunate that wiping the drive corrected so many errors, but I suspected that it would, and was afraid to do it because of the condition of the drive...I thought wiping the drive would push it over the edge. I think part of the reason so many errors were corrected is that I did so many clean installs in trying to correct a problem with my laptop not restarting on its own. Ever since I've had this laptop, I've had problems with it restarting on its own after an update or just reboot so I would have to manually power down the laptop and push the power button to start it again...Once again, this goes back to the Nvidia graphics that doesn't work well this laptop. I did a clean install after I caught a virus that I couldn't delete, and in a span of a few days, must of done 6 or 7 clean installs in trying to fix the restart problem...a Windows update would cause the restart problem.. I think I only stopped because of the smart failure message. Who knows how many installs I would of done without the message...the freakin' restart's been driving me crazy for 3 years. So after some research, I tried Spinrite on the hd and I believe iit recovered some data and corrected some errors, but it was just taking way too long, and I didn't want to push the hd over the edge so I stopped it after running it for several hours each day for a couple of days.. But the laptop was in bad shape, taking forever to boot up and crashing so I crossed my fingers and did yet another clean install. Because of the heat issues I have with this laptop, I literally used a big box fan set on its side with the air blowing up into my suspended laptop 3 inches above it for all the installs...boy, talk about an efficient notebook cooler. After downloading Ccleaner, I noticed the new wipe feature which made my laptop blue screen, bringing me to this forum, thank god. Thanks to everyone who contributed and DennisD for referring the mini tool which was a great help. And yes, I will occasionally report on the condition of the drive-about 2 months since the smart failure message, and hope to squeeze as much life I can out of this laptop, but with my luck, it'll probably die before I finish writi :)

Yes, I was highlighting the drive/partition in the user interface, but I think I might of forgotten to click apply maybe. Anyways, Windows was having trouble recognizing the changes I made in minitools so I went into disk management and rearranged the drives/partitions. I went ahead and did a more comprehensive deeper wipe-3 pass, and it eliminated nearly all the errors...down to 8 errors now from hundreds, but the K volume or last one on the list still blue screens with an error message near the end of the wipe so I isolated the bad sector to 16.09gb of unallocated space. And now the new D: drive wipes without blue screening and passed the check file system...hooray! - see minitools image below for reference. I've attached surface test results from quick wipe and 3 pass wipe. I'm tempted to the 7 pass wipe and see if it'll get rid of all the errors. I hope I managed to isolate all the bad sectors, but let me know, if you think I did it right from the surface test results.

MiniTools "Check File System" is not available to me on the interface. I've formatted the partitions, but that option is greyed out because I have no files in those partitions, I'm guessing. As for backing up, the G: drive is my external hd and I've already backed up everything and created a disk after I clean installed, so I'm good.

I ran the surface test from the mini tool app, and WOW...found hundreds of errors. So many that I stopped the surface scan on one of the larger partitions (K:) because it was taking way too long and I didn't want to push the laptop too much...fortunately, the (C:) with the OS was the only one that passed the initial surface test without errors. I also wiped all the drives with the mini tool except for C which had the OS on it. All the Drives wiped successfully except for K which got to 99% before it blue screened with the same error message. I've uploaded images from the Surface test on each drive with errors before and after wipe with the mini tool. Info about the partitions: (J:) is the partition I tried to isolate all the bad sectors originally after the clean install and was unallocated. (D:) and (K:) were originally all part of one partition but I tried to shrink D a little at a time to see if I could isolate where the bad sectors were by running wipe and seeing if it blue-sceened, but decided not to do it and left it as is...interesting to note when I tried to shrink D, it would only allow me to shrink it to 2.96gb partition. Also, it seems like surface test scans with the mini tool brings up different error reports in subsequent scans...why is this? Will running the mini tool wipe with different setting (0's and 1's) eliminate the errors that the quick wipe (just 0's) didn't correct? @DennisD - I just saw a Dylan documentary which featured Woody Guthrie in it...Dylan's hero and main influence. It's hard to tell from your pic, but he looks so young in the picture. @Superfast - if a block still passes the surface test, but takes a long time to verify it's ok, does a longer verifying time for the blocks indicate that it's on the way out?

Yes, when I say I have different drives named C, D, etc...I mean I have partitioned the one 250gb Toshiba hd I have in my HP. The reason I don't just get a new hd is because I hate this laptop and refuse to spend any more money in repairing it. I've already replaced the motherboard and I'm not about to put more money into a laptop that doubles as a furnace...in the winter who needs a heater when you have a HP laptop (g60-120us). My laptop is very similar to a model released around the same time which had a class action lawsuit brought against them that HP had to pay out because of heat issues- the nvidia graphics just doesn't work well with the hp computers. Because I bitched and moaned so much and brought up the class action lawsuit, they sold me a motherboard at cost for 80.00...I was debating whether to even spend the 80 to repair it when you can get a better laptop these days for under 500. When I took my laptop in to get it repaired, the tech said that nearly all of the computers they get are HP models with heat issues. I will try the mintool and other apps suggested, but won't get to it til I'm off work after this weekend. Also, this was first time I've had a blue screen on this laptop, and it only occured after trying to wipe the drive. While it's been about a month since the smart failure showed up, after the clean install, the laptop seems to run fine and boots up fast except for having to push the annoying F1 button for the smart failure at the start. As for my moniker, yes DennisD, it refers to an affinity I have for girls who have this attribute - originally from Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls," they make the rockin' world go around...one of my favorite songs. Also, I have online comic called fatbottoms - not what you think. DennisD- interesting avatar...what's the story behind the pic?

Yes, I think you are right "Superfast" , I think the backup was in one of the damaged sectors. Yes, I tried the 1 and 3 pass wipe of entire drive and same results, but this d drive is the only drive that is giving me problems with chkdsk...My other two partitioned drives are fine. I've been told you can partition around the bad sectors on the drive to an unallocated space, so I ran an error test with hd tune and it showed errors around the 90gb count so I tried to isolate about 40gb to a unallocated part of the drive to contain the errors, but it looks like I didn't do it right. How do i find and isolate the damaged sectors on my drive to an unallocated space on my hd...is this the best way to proceed with a smart failure hd? Can I run kill disk or dban on just one of my drives?

Something strange is happening when I run Drive Wipe on one of my drives. Let me preface this by saying I have smart failure on my disk because of reallocated sector count. I put in a clean install of windows on C drive and saved a backup to the D drive that is giving me problems. First time I ran drive wipe on D, it shut down the laptop giving me a blue screen error message saying it encountered some errors etc...it disappeared before I could read the whole thing. So I formated the D drive erasing my backup and tried to wipe the drive again. Same thing happened again. I noticed when I click on computer, I notice the D drive has a red bar instead of a blue bar like the other drives, so I opened the D drive and found a file that's about 20 gigs so I'm assuming it's the backup I made. I delete the file, and the red bar disappears and shows the D drive is empty, but every time I try to run the drive wipe on the D drive, it creates this file which shuts down my laptop with a blue screen error message and a runs a chkdsk on reboot, but the chkdsk gets stuck after completeing 3of3, so I have to manually power down the laptop and restart again. Somehow after I format the D drive. the drive wiper is recognizing the old backup and creates the file. I know it's risky to run the drive wipe, but I don't care about losing any info, I just want to use the laptop til it dies.