Laptop not responding....

makeorbrake

Laptop = Acer Aspire 5738G
OS = Windows 7


As of this morning, my laptop is proving to be unresponsive to the point of being rendered useless.

It will boot up - but when it does so - it starts running checkdisk. After that, it allows me to login - and appears normal. However, if I try to run a program or surf the web, it becomes unresponsive. It may eventually load eventually.

I did at one stage get a blue screen and I'm suspecting a hardware issue - possibly hard disk_failure. Have microsoft security essentials running since day1 - and automatically updated. I doubt this is a virus. Additionally, I am careful about what gets downloaded and what sites are visited.


Regrettably, I had not setup a restore point - so can't restore to a previous instance. I'm unsure how to troubleshoot this from here. Has anyone any suggestions as to what I should try next?

makeorbrake

When I open the browser (chrome), its stalled with the info "waiting for cache" displayed downthe bottom. It doesn't matter what I attempt to open, it really labours to open it - usually resulting in "not responding".


There's a memory diagnostic tool available upon startup. Tried to run this twice - ran it a while but the laptop powered off a third of the way through that check.


Could there be an issue with the memory modules - not seated correctly or damaged??

zenno

Disconnect all power to laptop before you do anything, remove battery...There should be an easy access lid on the bottom part of the laptop in the middle bottom of the laptop, unscrew the 5/6 screws on this and take out the ram/memory module/s and start up the laptop without ram for 1 minutes and then hard shut down.

reseat the ram/memory and start it up and see if it boots up.

PropJoe10

I would strongly advise you to back up your data on your hard drive, sounds very much like a dying hard drive to me. Most freezing and blue screen issues are caused by bad hard drive sectors.

makeorbrake

I revmoved the memory modules - and booted it up. I think it booted up but there was nothing displayed on screen - i.e. screen remained black.

Ran a sfc/ scandisk - but that didn't return any errors.

Even windows explorer is having difficulty running...

Not sure how I can image hd when it's running like this?

Skill Magill

You wouldn't want to image it anyway if there are bad sectors on the Hard drive. Does it boot into safe mode (f8) ?
From there start removing data. Thats your priority at this stage.
Then run chkdsk /f/r from the cmd prompt and reboot.
See if that helps

PropJoe10

Forget imaging the drive, get everything you can off it before it goes completely. From what you've described, its either a very badly corrupted Windows installation (do you have a good antivirus on it?) or the hard drive is about to fail. Most likely the latter. Safe mode is a good bet, if you can get in there and it seems to run reasonably ok, run a full virus scan in safe mode. If not, get your files off it and try a replacement hard drive.

makeorbrake

Skill Magill wrote: »

Then run chkdsk /f/r from the cmd prompt and reboot. See if that helps

This seems to have gotten it back on track.


However, what can I conclude from this (aside from the need to backup)? Is that hd on the way out?...or is there any other explanation for this issue?

Skill Magill

That would have fixed and repaired the hard drive. Sometimes when the machine isn't turned off correctly files get corrupted. No need
to buy a new hd now
Maybe....:rolleyes:

makeorbrake

Skill Magill wrote: »

Sometimes when the machine isn't turned off correctly files get corrupted.

Regrettably, that happens (improper power down - not the corrupted files) regularly. One of the flaws of this Acer machine is a misfunctioning battery lock - with the battery falling out more than a once daily occurrence.

PlanIT Computing

makeorbrake wrote: »

This seems to have gotten it back on track.


However, what can I conclude from this (aside from the need to backup)? Is that hd on the way out?...or is there any other explanation for this issue?

How old is the laptop? You should really be backing up any documents / files that are important on a regular basis.

Check the SMART status of the drive...

makeorbrake

PlanIT Computing wrote: »

How old is the laptop?

Purchased in May 2010.

PlanIT Computing wrote: »

You should really be backing up any documents / files that are important on a regular basis.

You're quite right - I should have done that.

NoDrama wrote:

Check the SMART status of the drive...

How do I do that exactly?

I'm a *nix user, I don't use Windows, I've just googled and the following free program should check and return the status of the S.M.A.R.T of the drive.

If it returns that the drive is ok, then I suspect that it is the filesystem is kaput, so best take all important stuff of the drive, which is usually under your username, and then proceed to perform a full re-install (the joys of windows), though I would dban the drive beforehand if possible, which is just nuking the drive by writting a series of 1's on the drive.

Hope you get it all up and going...