Computer Advice Please

[zeolite]

My rackety old Samsung v25 laptop is not well! It hangs up when loading the system 32 drivers even in safe mode. I managed to get a friend to use a recovery disc on it and he managed to get somewhere. He reckoned the mothrboard or hard drive are the problem. He was sure the video card was OK. This 'puter is my constant companion and I am skint so any cost effective help from you guys will be much appreciated.

[pmacFTO]

If you can get it to me in Broxburn at my work - I'd have a look at it for you - have you tried reinstalling completely? (after backing up your data which is no problem if you need it done)

A good way to test it is to download and burn one of those operating systems which run from CD - usually a flavour of Unix/Linux - it sounds complicated but it's a very simple way to test if the hardware is the issue or just Windows itself.

I have fixed a few PC's for people on here and I understand if you want some confirmation I know what I am doing I maintain all the PCs and built the network for 25 PC's and Macs in our offices and had a PC repair co. for 2 yrs

[st3ph3n]

Constant use laptop generally says to me it's a hard drive having done 3 or 4 in the last year for friends/relatives/enemies.

pmac knows his onions though so worth the trip if you can get down

[thefastone]

I'd had to replace the HDD 3-4 times in my last laptop... wasn't impressed...

[st3ph3n]

2.5" drives are very tightly packaged, and suffer much more extreme heat cycles than regular desktops. Think how warm the bottom of a laptop can get when you use it for a while.

There's a lot of "budget" laptops that are being used more frequently, or harder, than they were ever designed for in my opinion. They're still great value machines though - just have a backup drive you sycnhronise your stuff to now and again please.

[Vimmy]

Also depending on the drive manufacturer you can download, for free, hard drive diagnostic software which would scan the disc for bad sectors etc. The only problem is that you need to burn it to a cd which is kind of catch 22.

The idea of the 'Live' cd that can be downloaded or found on most Linux based magazines would be a very useful tool to use as it would pretty use a good proportion of the resources that the hard disc based operating system would use. If the computer ran badly on this live cd then chances are that the motherboard may be dodgy (as the disc would hardly be accessed).

If the live cd ran ok and then you tried to read the files that were on the hard disk, which then started to fail then, it would more than likely be down do a dodgy disc. This live cd method also then gives you the option to backup your files to a usb stick rather than lose the lot after a reinstall.

Cheers,

Colin

[pmacFTO]

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...ndows-computer/

I use a USB solution but this may help you initially.

I also have a boot disk which can load WinPE up which is basic version of windows that runs in memory alone - i.e you don't even need a HD in the machine - also great because it runs windows utils too so you can use HD scanners/memory checks and other diagnostic tools

Edited January 12, 2010 by pmacFTO

[zeolite]

Thanks for the replies guys. I knew I could get some useful advice on here.

I reckon the HD is the problem so I will give the Ubuntu a go.

[zeolite]

OK. got the Ubuntu to run and it is my hard drive. Anyone know of a cheap replacement for a 40G FUJI MHT2040AT?

[zeolite]

Well would you believe it? After installing the Ubuntu OS I rebooted and the XP Pro option popped up and the damn thing restarted!. I have done all the disk checking I can think of and I am typing this message on the old warrior now.

Thanks to all.

[st3ph3n]

Zeo - http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Hard-Drives/subc...IDE-Hard-Drives

Anything from there will work fine on that.

Definitely get stuff backed up whilst you can.