Possible virus? Folders slowly becoming inaccessible - closing by themselves

ocmyers

Estimable
Jan 9, 2015
5
0
4,510
Hello,

I am running Windows 8.1 and have Avast anti virus software. My computer is only a year old and it runs perfectly but a fair few months ago I noticed that all of a sudden when I tried to open a folder on my hard drive it would stay open for no more than a second or two and then close immediately before I could click anything. All the folder contains is ordinary photos. I asked for advice from my friend who is fairly savvy with this sort of stuff and he 'extracted' the photos and created a new folder and made a copy of them in the new folder for me. After this everything was fine but I am now starting to experience this when I access other folders! These folders are also ordinary folders with nothing but photos in them. When I open the folders I can see them all in there as normal but I cannot click anything, it closes immediately. Has anyone experienced anything like this before? I keep all software up to date and run regular virus scans. Nothing suspicious in task manager etc. Just to clarify, the photos were totally accessible before and were created on the hard drive that they are currently on. I copied the folders to my external drive and I can access them from there.
 
Solution
Sounds like your hard drive might be going.

Mechanical drive or SSD? Download and run hd tune and make note of results, google what you see. Super low drops in read/write speeds indicate problems. Run a checkdesk to look for bad sectors. etc

andy_Man

Estimable
Nov 17, 2014
29
0
4,610
Sounds like your hard drive might be going.

Mechanical drive or SSD? Download and run hd tune and make note of results, google what you see. Super low drops in read/write speeds indicate problems. Run a checkdesk to look for bad sectors. etc
 
Solution

ocmyers

Estimable
Jan 9, 2015
5
0
4,510


Running this did manage to remove a few things that I was unaware of but unfortunately didn't fix the problem. Thanks for your help though and I appreciate the reply!
 

ocmyers

Estimable
Jan 9, 2015
5
0
4,510


Oh dear, I hope not! Barely a year old. Got my OS etc on SSD which is running fine and photos and music on hdd which is where the problem is. I downloaded HD tune and still running tests at the moment. ran the check disk command and no bad sectors. Was there a particular test that I should be running on HD tune?
 

andy_Man

Estimable
Nov 17, 2014
29
0
4,610
To be honest, can't remember off the top of my head. I am at work. I would do some googling about hard drive failing and how to check, etc.

Hd tune has error checking, and SMART status.
 

ocmyers

Estimable
Jan 9, 2015
5
0
4,510


Ok I will take a look - thanks so much for your help!
 

Daneaston

Estimable
Jan 24, 2015
1
0
4,510
I have a similar problem. My folders close by them self after a few minutes.
Also my computer is just over a year old. But this is happening in my three drives [one is ssd] and also in two of my thumb drives. They remain open for a few minutes, them they shut down.
I have a Dell xps with Windows 8.1, 16 Gb RAM
Any ideas?
Dan