Windows 10: Windows 10 PC keeps freezing/crashing - hard disk 'has a bad block'?

For the past week or so my laptop has been freezing after about 20-30 mins of use. The freeze is unrecoverable and often the screen just goes black, and I have to switch it off and on using the power button.
Have been looking in event viewer and there are numerous Errors - but not sure which (if any) are relevant. However one which sticks out are errors from Source=disk, saying 'The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.'
Any ideas? Thanks

:)

 

Windows 10 Freezes during update.

Hello Windows 10 keeps freezing during an update that it tries. The two that do it are updates 1607 and 1709. It gets to around 56% and then turns black screen, I hard crash it, then it starts again at 75% and freezes again at 82% forcing a second hard
crash. It has continued this way for awhile now. I have attempted troubleshooting, and deleting my cache. Nothing works. Can anyone help me with this.

 

*Original Title: PC freezing and crashes; Disc usage 100%

*Original Title: PC freezing

My PC for the last week has been freezing.

1) Program crashes (usually)

2) Disk usage goes to 100% and doesn't change

3) Cannot use Windows Explorer - taskbar, start menu, notifications, desktop icons, but I can move my mouse usually

4) Have to hard restart which is killing my PC - I must have done this over 50 times in the last week.

My PC has frozen 3 times in 15 minutes today alone! Please help me, I made a thread for this but no one is helping.

 

Recommend usb or dvd booting Macrium Reflect or anything similar and making either a one-pass sector by sector clone or full image of the source HD onto any trustworthy, affordable, external HD today if not yesterday. At the very least, copy your data folders and files onto any reliable external media today if not yesterday.

 

So I take it your suggesting the hard drive is likely to die soon? Are there any steps I can take to correct this/avoid it? Thanks.

 

There is no way to predict when a HD fails completely. I just recommend doing routine OS and Data partition backups -- as a habit.

 

Issues is that even if I have my data backed up - my laptop is still pretty much unusable as after half an hour or so it will become unresponsive. If I were to replace the hard drive with a new one (or SSD), is this likely to fix this issue?

 

If the drive that's throwing errors is replaced with a new, good working drive, it will probably end those errors. It could, but might not necessarily, restore your system to normal operation. Only way to find out is to try. You don't want to keep using a drive that's producing such errors, that's for sure. I hope you have a backup (or a low amount of data to backup) because a failure rate of "every half hour" may not leave you enough time to create a good backup between failures! I'd suggest an SSD rather than an HDD, if you can afford one.
HTH,
--Ed--

 

First thing is to save all of your files. Then you can do whatever you want to troubleshoot and fix.
After you are backed up place your computer in safe mode with command prompt and run

Safe mode in Win 10 - Microsoft Community

1) command prompt: sfc /scannow (checks the integrity of the operating system and makes repairs)

2) command prompt: dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth (checks the integrity of the operating system and makes repairs)

System file check - Microsoft Community

There is free software from downloads.com or directly from publishers to check hard drives and SSD drives. Check the hard drive with seatools for windows so you can see the results of SMART, short, and long generic. If it fails the SMART test there are lots of software programs such as crystal disk mark that can give you visuals and data.
This would give you information on the drive. (No repairs are made, pass fail is provided)

One of my old HP computers has a normal SMART and failed short and long generic. So having all three scans is useful.

3) command prompt: chkdsk (read only mode provides information about bad sectors, unindexed files, orphaned files, etc.

Then plan to be without the computer for at least 8 hours (run overnight) and sometimes it can take substantially longer.
4) command prompt: chkdsk /f /r (this will require a Y and a reboot) (it can fix the files on a drive)

Again you should back up any and all important files before the troubleshooting and fixes. Some of the troubleshooting steps that work routinely can sometimes have pitfalls such as making a marginal operating system unbootable.