Laptop HD problems.

cianclarke

I keep getting the blue screen of death or random "near-powerdowns" on my laptop (HD stops ticking but power light still on, only no noise).
After every power down or blue screen I let chckdsk run on startup, and numerous bad sectors show up every time. I'm not sure what is causing this problem or how to fix it - I usually don't have time to note the text of the blue screen before it's gone.
Would a faulty driver cause this? It's only appeared last week or two. I restored the system to about a month ago earlier today, but I'm not too confident that this will fix the problem.
If it appears again should I simply format again? This would be ~the fifth format on this drive, is this bad for the drive?
Lots of questions, and lots of answers would be very much appreciated! Thanks.

Karoma

First thing first, get the info on the blue screen
Turn off auto-reboot:
Open up Control Panel->System->Advanced (Shortcut: Start -> run -> sysdm.cpl ,3)
Under Start & Recovery - click the Settings button
Untick automatically restart

If you have a camera-post up a shot of the BSOD...


Have you run a chkdsk with /f /r? And noted the Event Viewer report?

DublinWriter

The reasons could be many and various, but it would be helpful it you mentioned the OS, any service packs, any additional PCMCIA cards installed, etc etc.

More than likely it might be faulty RAM.

cianclarke

Karoma wrote:

First thing first, get the info on the blue screen
Turn off auto-reboot:
Open up Control Panel->System->Advanced (Shortcut: Start -> run -> sysdm.cpl ,3)
Under Start & Recovery - click the Settings button
Untick automatically restart

If you have a camera-post up a shot of the BSOD...


Have you run a chkdsk with /f /r? And noted the Event Viewer report?

I'll do this, it would help getting a screengrab, and I'll take a photo of the screen next time to get the info.
As I recall from running chkdsk it only lets me run without the /f command when booted up, however after the BSOD I think it runs chckdsk for me and fixes as it goes along - it shows up loads of bad sectors, mainly in windows folders.

DublinWriter wrote:

The reasons could be many and various, but it would be helpful it you mentioned the OS, any service packs, any additional PCMCIA cards installed, etc etc.

More than likely it might be faulty RAM.

Apologies for the vagueness! The RAM is original, however I was considering installing additional (crucial) - haven't done this yet.
OS is Windows XP, service pack is SP2.
PCMCIA cards installed, strange that you mention that. The devices I sort of had an inkling may have been causing problems were:
A Netgear PCMCIA wireless network card (using it's own driver and connecting to the network using it's own software provided by the manafactuer), and:
A USB Belkin wireless hub (with a 5m USB cable - needed to get around the wireless blackspot in my room where the netgear won't work). Also using driver supplied by Belkin from website, and connects to the network this time using the XP utilities.

Sometimes both devices would have been plugged in at the same time with one or both respective internet connections disabled, d'know if this makes a difference.

Many thanks - I'll disable the auto restart first of all and if it comes up again I can get it.

Duffman

Does the drive stop spinning before the BSOD appears?

Any other odd noises coming from it? Clicking or grinding sounds?

Does this happen immediately when you add or remove any of the devices you mentioned?


It sounds like your HD might be on the way out. Backup everything now and don't store anything of value on it alone. It's not the end of the world though, laptop HDs are relatively cheap and easy to replace yourself.

I'm suggesting this because I had a laptop with what appear to be the same symptoms. There weren't any signs of obvious mechanical failure like clicking etc but the disk would randomly die causing a BSOD. No problems since I replaced it.

Couldn't hurt to download one of those SMART monitoring apps and see if the drive considers itself to be healthy.

cianclarke

Nothing of value on it anyway - it's pretty much empty! The drive doesn't stop spinning beforehand, just when the screen does appear it stops. I'll look into getting a monitoring tool installed. I'll keep an eye out on eBay then for a HD...
Thanks!