Possibe hard drive problem

colm_mcm

Have a HP Pavillion DV2000 (Vista)

Recently Firefox has been giving problems, in that it was freezing the computer, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it last month. The problem persisted maybe happening twice or 3 times a day. Foolishly I kept on using Firefox through habit and turned the laptop off by using the power button. (In retrosopect, probably not a great idea)

Yesterday evening, I turned the laptop on, started up as normal, asked for password, then I got a blue screen (not the kind of blue screen I used to get on older computers, a different shade!) this screen would come sometimes for a few seconds while windows loaded and all would be well, but now it just stays there.

In the meantime, I used Safe Mode and tried to uninstall Firefox (which didn't work, although I could uninstall anything else I tried) I deleted it by going into Program Files and it's gone now.

I then ran a scan on the hard disk through the BIOS (I think ?) and it shows up a message:

#2 -07 Fail

Which sounds bad.... question is - what does this mean and am I looking at a new hard drive.

Also, will I be able to get stuff off my hard drive through Safe Mode?

One last thing, my laptop appears to have 2 hard drives, 1 for recovery ( C: and )

Thanks in advance
Colm

Alanstrainor

I presume there was a diagnostics tool at the bios level that returned that fail? If so, then you can be fairly certain that there's a problem with the HD alright. This would indeed mean a new hard drive needs to be purchased, they are really cheap these days, 70 quid should buy a 320GB SATA drive.
As for recovering your data from the current drive, i usually download ubuntu, burn it onto a cd, and boot from the cd on the busted laptop. When it boots there should be an option to "try ubuntu without installing" or something similar. This will boot up into a new OS, and from which you should be able to access your hard drive and use a usb stick or external hard drive to get all your data.

As for your hard drive appearing to have 2 drives, this is most likely just one drive that's been partitioned into 2 drives. So it appears to the OS that it has 2 drives. It's nothing to worry about really, and won't affect the above.

Voodu Child

Yeah, backup your data asap. Thats gotta be the #1 priority, above even finding out the problem. Of course, if you already have a backup your sorted, but you'd be amazed the amount of people who dont.

You can backup your data from Safe Mode no problem. Just plug in an external drive and copy everything important across. And if the OS isn't working, try a LiveCD (or LiveUSB) as above.

Forget about everything else until you've got the data backed up. Don't even use the laptop until you have a drive ready to move the data to.

colm_mcm

Thanks guys, my main issue now is that Vista (and all the nice HP software like QuickPlay and drivers) are on the HD only as the laptop didn't come (new) with any software discs - everything was preloaded. Do I need to copy everything to do with the OS that's partitionned to an external drive and then copy it back onto the new drive, or am I just baing Naïve to think it would be that easy?

Darwin

Don't panic if you can't get your HP drivers etc. off the recovery partition, you should be able to get what you need from here

x in the city

colm_mcm wrote: »

Have a HP Pavillion DV2000 (Vista)

Recently Firefox has been giving problems, in that it was freezing the computer, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it last month. The problem persisted maybe happening twice or 3 times a day. Foolishly I kept on using Firefox through habit and turned the laptop off by using the power button. (In retrosopect, probably not a great idea)

Yesterday evening, I turned the laptop on, started up as normal, asked for password, then I got a blue screen (not the kind of blue screen I used to get on older computers, a different shade!) this screen would come sometimes for a few seconds while windows loaded and all would be well, but now it just stays there.

In the meantime, I used Safe Mode and tried to uninstall Firefox (which didn't work, although I could uninstall anything else I tried) I deleted it by going into Program Files and it's gone now.

I then ran a scan on the hard disk through the BIOS (I think ?) and it shows up a message:

#2 -07 Fail

Which sounds bad.... question is - what does this mean and am I looking at a new hard drive.

Also, will I be able to get stuff off my hard drive through Safe Mode?

One last thing, my laptop appears to have 2 hard drives, 1 for recovery ( C: and )

Thanks in advance
Colm

turning off a laptop with the power button is a great way to kill off a hdd...!

they have shut down and turn off modes for a reason.

colm_mcm

thaks xitc, but the shutdown function wasn't working as it had frozen.

Thanks for the link Darwin

colm_mcm

one more thing, is there any particular hard drive type I should be looking for, I assume they're not universal

Alanstrainor

colm_mcm wrote: »

one more thing, is there any particular hard drive type I should be looking for, I assume they're not universal

There are different types, but any laptop that's been bought in the last 4~ years will use a 2.5" SATA hard drive, and pretty much any type/capacity will work. On large capacity drives there can be a slight increase in height, but other than that they will all be pretty much the same. 70 quid should get you a decent 320GB drive from dabs and the likes.

cormie

Interesting Colm, similar problem here, firefox freezes a few times a day aswell on me, haven't tried to reinstall or anything but it has happened after it's updated itself still. I made a thread about my problem here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64102398

so it appears I may have a problem with the HD and I'm wondering just because I may have one or two bad sectors, does this mean my whole HD is at risk or is this common enough? New HD needed ASAP?

x in the city

cormie wrote: »

Interesting Colm, similar problem here, firefox freezes a few times a day aswell on me, haven't tried to reinstall or anything but it has happened after it's updated itself still. I made a thread about my problem here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64102398

so it appears I may have a problem with the HD and I'm wondering just because I may have one or two bad sectors, does this mean my whole HD is at risk or is this common enough? New HD needed ASAP?

install active smart

it will monitor your hdd, infact everyone should have it

cormie

Is there a freeware alternative that does the same/better job to Active Smart I wonder?

cormie

I did a full test on my HD with the WD Diagnostic tool and it passed

This is even though it gives errors when backing up my HD to an external HD and I still have firefox slow down issues!

polyfusion

cormie wrote: »

Is there a freeware alternative that does the same/better job to Active Smart I wonder?

DiskCheckup: http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

Activesmart probably has more bells and whistles, but for viewing and collating smart info, DiskCheckUp does the job.

Reallocated sector count is the most critical value to monitor; if you see that value beginning to increase, it's time to back up the hard drive and get a new one.

cormie

Thanks for that, must give it a go