Laptop- major problem....
Discussion
My Boyfriends laptop (packard bell running on vista home premium) seemed to have packed in the other day, (only about 7 or 8 months old). Upon startup it said something about not being able to start up, and gave the option to try and repair itself. It failed to be able to do so, and automatically shut off completely. I can't remember the exact error sorry.
We booted it up again, it loaded up very slowly, came to a black screen with the task bar at the bottom after about 15 mins of loading. The cursor was spinning in the "loading" motion, and after a further 5 minutes the desktop picture appeared, however the cursor still spinning. We waited ages for it to settle but it didn't, and upon clicking the start button, everything froze up completely and went semi whited out for example when the computer stops responding. Errors saying "google desktop has stopped working" started to pop up, about 3 or 4 different error messages regarding stopping working.
We sent the laptop to an IT technician friend, who wiped Vista and installed it fresh, but the Business version. We recieved it back, started it up, desktop loaded great but the cursor didn't stop spinning around in the loading motion. Upon clicking the start button, it whited out again as if not responding. Shut it down, rebooted it, got as far as opening MS paint, drawing a squiggle, saving it, opening my documents before it crashed again.
What sounds like the problem here?
Thanks
We booted it up again, it loaded up very slowly, came to a black screen with the task bar at the bottom after about 15 mins of loading. The cursor was spinning in the "loading" motion, and after a further 5 minutes the desktop picture appeared, however the cursor still spinning. We waited ages for it to settle but it didn't, and upon clicking the start button, everything froze up completely and went semi whited out for example when the computer stops responding. Errors saying "google desktop has stopped working" started to pop up, about 3 or 4 different error messages regarding stopping working.
We sent the laptop to an IT technician friend, who wiped Vista and installed it fresh, but the Business version. We recieved it back, started it up, desktop loaded great but the cursor didn't stop spinning around in the loading motion. Upon clicking the start button, it whited out again as if not responding. Shut it down, rebooted it, got as far as opening MS paint, drawing a squiggle, saving it, opening my documents before it crashed again.
What sounds like the problem here?
Thanks
It sounds like the hard disk is failing.
If its less than a year old then you should be able to get a repair under the warranty.
Just make sure that you delete anything personal from the drive before you send it back.
If there is no warranty then you can get a new drive from ebuyer.com for a reasonable price.
If its less than a year old then you should be able to get a repair under the warranty.
Just make sure that you delete anything personal from the drive before you send it back.
If there is no warranty then you can get a new drive from ebuyer.com for a reasonable price.
I'm surprised your IT technician friend managed to re-install windows on such faulty hardware. Did he actually sit there and re install it, or just image the drive?
But yeah, sounds like the hard drive is faulty, although I'm surprised you aren't getting any BSOD's (a blue screen with white writing on it) but you might have the machine set to restart on error, which means you wouldn't see it.
Obviously it would have been very helpful to know what the original error said. It is possible it's some other hardware problem, can you get your IT friend to check the hard drive out before you (potentially) waste £50 on a new hard drive? I've seen a faulty video card give broadly similar symptoms to those you describe.
If your friend can't help are you able to start the machine off the windows CD and run chkdsk on it? Does the machine work properly when booted off something other then the hard drive, maybe you could try a linux liveCD or something?
But yeah, sounds like the hard drive is faulty, although I'm surprised you aren't getting any BSOD's (a blue screen with white writing on it) but you might have the machine set to restart on error, which means you wouldn't see it.
Obviously it would have been very helpful to know what the original error said. It is possible it's some other hardware problem, can you get your IT friend to check the hard drive out before you (potentially) waste £50 on a new hard drive? I've seen a faulty video card give broadly similar symptoms to those you describe.
If your friend can't help are you able to start the machine off the windows CD and run chkdsk on it? Does the machine work properly when booted off something other then the hard drive, maybe you could try a linux liveCD or something?
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