Problem with a HP laptop (6830s)

Renn

Only purchased this a little over a year ago but having some major problems with it now. For the past week it has been crawling at periods and then running fine after a restart or whatever. But over the past few days it's been in that constant 'crawling' mode and I just can't get anything to work on it - even trying to get to System Restore is a massive pain and sometimes doesn't even work.

It tends to heat up quite a bit if that's any use to you guys. Whenever I restart it now it brings me to a Startup Repair screen where it says it's looking to solve the issue or whatever - but it doesn't seem to work and whenever it does get to the desktop, it's still ultra slow. And it takes forever to reboot but I'm sure you knew that already!

So what can I do to rescue it? There's some files on it that I wouldn't mind saving - I've heard some things about a Ubuntu live cd but have no real idea as to what it actually does.


Is my laptop truly screwed?


Thanks in advance.

ED E

Sounds like a malware/viral issue. Do you have any security installed?

Black Swan

Need more details about you laptop.

• What (OS) operating system? XP, Vista, Windows 7 or what?
• What AV (anti-virus) do you have installed?
• What firewall?
• Have you been updating your OS, AV, and applications frequently?
• How frequently do you disk clean?
• Have you ever defragmented?
• Has it been cleaned inside of dust and crap?
• Probably too soon to have heat sinks thermal greased (only 1 year old)?

Renn

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Need more details about you laptop.

• What (OS) operating system? XP, Vista, Windows 7 or what?
• What AV (anti-virus) do you have installed?
• What firewall?
• Have you been updating your OS, AV, and applications frequently?
• How frequently do you disk clean?
• Have you ever defragmented?
• Has it been cleaned inside of dust and crap?
• Probably too soon to have heat sinks thermal greased (only 1 year old)?

Have AVG installed but there's a virus in quaratine on the laptop.

1) Vista
2) AVG
3) Um, presuming the windows thing, honestly don't know
4) I was under the impression that the OS updates itself, I always see it running in the bottom right hand corner. AVG not so much.
5) Don't disk clean that often.
6) Defraged quite a few times but it never seems to make much of a difference.
7) Nope, never opened this thing once.
8) Not sure what the hell this is, sorry


Thanks for any help. Is this a common enough problem or am I truly screwed?

Black Swan

Renn wrote: »

Thanks for any help. Is this a common enough problem or am I truly screwed?

There are a lot of routines you can do towards a possible solution. Not having direct access to your rig, please know there is a bit of guessing on my part.

First try:

• While online, try to update your anti-virus programme
• Reboot your laptop
• Immediately after it has shutdown, and it just begins to reboot, press the F8 key several times while it's rebooting until a screen appears.
• Select safety mode
• Run a full scan with your anti-virus programme
• Reboot your system and see if it has improved performance

Then post your results here.

*********
The overheating you mentioned is troublesome. Not having direct access to your machine, I can only guess why. If the machine is still on warranty, I would recommend that you take it in for service, telling them that it's overheating, running sluggish, and occasionally crashing. Perhaps your fan is failing, or it needs thermal greasing of the heat sinks, or needs a good cleaning out of dust and other junk?

If you are not on warranty, then check the fan to see if it appears to be working when your machine is turned on. If the fan has stopped or appears sluggish, it may have failed, or it just might be due to dust and garbage inside. If you are mechanically inclined, open the case and gently clean the interior of your laptop of all dust and garbage. Probably the safest and most thorough way to do this is to buy an air spray can specifically made to blow out dust from computers. A friend of mine has cleaned his by using a small tipped artist paint brush, and then very patiently and lightly brush the dust away without damaging any of the components inside your laptop... which takes forever.

After cleaning it and screwing the case back together, turn it on and observe if the fan works. If so, then try using you laptop to see if the heating problem has been mitigated, and if your other performance problems have been resolved. If the fan is working but the system is still overheating, you may have to thermal grease the heat sinks. You can find your model of laptop online, along with a step-by-step procedure on how to do this.

Renn

Back again. Thanks for that - it's running okay since (updated the virus protection etc and I think it's got one virus in quarantine). But I think it's still overheating, or it's making pretty loud noises at times I should say. I'm tempted to just wipe everything off the thing and start from scratch but I should probably check the fans first? I don't particularly fancy opening it up tbh, much risk involved for someone that's not used to this sort of thing?

ED E

With the time you've had it, there's a good chance its pretty clogged in there. Even more so if you're female:p(makeup is a killer).

Opening the case is the best way to remove dust, but laptops can be a bit of a pain to take down, and not everyone would be comfortable doing so, understandably.

What you can try is buying a can of compressed air and using that to try and remove as much crap as you can. This may well get it to a useable point.

Another issue can be the conductive paste between the cooler and the CPU, but if it comes to that get a nerdy mate or a shop to do it.


What you could do is stick it on a flat surface with no obstructions around it, install Speccy or similar and see what temps it idles at. This would give an idea of just how bad it is.