Unable to write to INI files, or settings files - Also, disk corruption?

[Malice-]

Hello all, long time no see if anyone remembers me.

For the sake of saving you guys spam... I'm going to kind of post about two problems I'm having, that seem to correlation with each other.

The first problem is something that's been bothering me for a while, and Google proved no use in helping me solve it...

It seems that my computer, in the past few months, has had trouble saving settings in a lot of my programs. The one I notice most frequently, because I use it most frequently, is my Ventrilo (VoIP) client. Basically, it has the settings and server information that I put in months ago... however, when I update the information, say, add a new server, or change my settings at all, and then press OK or Apply... I get an error message saying "Unable to write INI file". HOWEVER, the settings or new server WOULD save... as long as I kept Ventrilo open. Once I close out the program completely, everything setting I changed or server I added would disappear, and when I reopen the program, its back to the way it was.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling and repairing multiple times, which led me to the conclusion that it's not the Ventrilo client that is causing the problem. I then started noticing similar problems in other programs... programs settings only being saved while the program is open and then reverting back after closing.

I thought based on this and other weird symptoms that maybe my disk was corrupted. Ran virus scans, no viruses (apparently)... And I attempted to run windows ScanDisk. It got up to step 4 (Verifying file data...) and it took about two hours to get to 17 percent, in which case it froze there. So, I had no luck completing the scandisk which leaves me to believe theres something probably wrong with the disk. I don't want to have to format again except as a last resort... but other than that, I'm not sure where I should go from here.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Malice-

 

[SFilip]

I don't remember how ScanDisk operates, long time since I used that, but if I'm not mistaking the progress bar does seemingly stop at some point, only to continue or instantly finish afterwards. Freezing is, on the other hand, bad. Usually very bad, this can indicate a HDD failing.
How old is your HDD anyway?

Try running ScanDisk once again. If the same thing happens then go to the manufacturer's site and see if they have some checking/repairing software.

 

[Malice-]

I don't remember how ScanDisk operates, long time since I used that, but if I'm not mistaking the progress bar does seemingly stop at some point, only to continue or instantly finish afterwards. Freezing is, on the other hand, bad. Usually very bad, this can indicate a HDD failing.
How old is your HDD anyway?

Try running ScanDisk once again. If the same thing happens then go to the manufacturer's site and see if they have some checking/repairing software.

Thanks, I'll try it again.

Does anyone else know anything about anything I mentioned?

 

[enouwee]

Thanks, I'll try it again.

Does anyone else know anything about anything I mentioned?

As SFilip said, do an integrity check of all your partitions.

After backing up your important data, best is to start a surface integrity check ("Scan for and attempty recovery of bad sectors" in scandisk or "chkdsk /R") of your partitions, start with C: in case you have many.

Most hard disk manufacturers provide special tools that diagnose drive failures, so does your system:

• enable SMART monitoring in your BIOS (go through all the pages, it should be hidden somewhere)
• or run a tool like this to query the SMART values: DiskCheckup. This tool too should provide an integrity test (called SMART "self-test"): close all applications before starting the test. If there are many options, choose something like "long, captive test". The test duration is mentionned somewhere, in minutes.
• using the above tool, or writing down the HDD model inside the BIOS, download drive's manufacturer's diagnosis tool. IBM, Maxtor (Seagate) or WD provide some.