My computer is having some major issues I suspect are caused by some sort of hardware problem. Some quick background: I switched my computer case about fourth months ago. A couple months later my computer was having problems booting (it would take forever to start up or not at all) and I was getting event error IDs 11 and 51. Sometimes a blue screen would tell me there was a hardware problem or the black screen with white text would say "disk read error." I pressed on the connections inside the case and that fixed it. Now, about a month or two later, I'm having problems again and getting some of the same error messages. However, a new message has told me that windows\system32\config\system was corrupt or missing. Event IDs are 57, 51 and 11. Sometimes I can boot it up, sometimes only for a little while before it crashes, other times not at all. My video card also seems hot when I touch it, more than just warm, although I dunno if that means anything. My first thought is my hard drive is failing. I estimate it's between 3 and 6 years old, but I don't remember. It's Seagate. But I wonder how I can pin this down and make sure it's not something else? I also wonder if it could be my hard drive enclosure and not the drive itself? What sort of tests and checks can I do before I go through getting a new HDD? (All my stuff has been backed up on an external HDD!) Thanks for any help.

Try the hard drive testing software from Seagate, it can be found and downloaded at; http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/su... HTH

More than likely your harddrive is failing. You can download the sea tools to do the repair and/or diagnostics testing on the drive from seagate > support. You should match it to the model of harddrive that you have as they have an older version and a new version of the tool.. Change Is Good http://www.citizenlink.org/Stopligh...

OK, I used the SeaTools diagnostic program I have. The generic short test passed. The generic long test failed. That's probably not good. I also have this program called Astra32 that says my HDD health is "poor." I'm thinking I should first try a different HDD cable, in case that's the problem, since a lot of error event ID 11 with a disk source seemed to be caused by problems with the HDD cable and/or enclosure, from what I have read. Can I use any HDD cable, like one from an old HDD? Otherwise, I have heard that Seagate HDDs are very reliable. Mine has lasted several years (my hunch tells me its been 7 but I just can't recall when I got it) so I guess I can buy another at NewEgg or ZipZoomFly.

It was apparently a bad hard drive cable. I had the exact same errors with a brand new hard drive. So I replaced the SATA cable and boot times have been fast and no lock-ups or errors in the event viewer.