mysterious laptop problem

lol... I already said that. That's fine, I won't help from now on.
 
JMH said:
lol... I already said that. That's fine, I won't help from now on.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, I thought I replied to all posts but I must have missed your post. :Oops:
 
Your "expert" was probably right .... The laptop's harddrive is probably going out soon.

There several software you can download for free that would check the status of your harddrive and check to see if any read/write error was logged into the harddrive buffer.

I use Ultimate Boot CD to troubleshoot PC and check the status of Harddrives, but there are several different software out there that you can use to check the status of Harddrive to determine if it going bad.

.
 
TechBill said:
Your "expert" was probably right .... The laptop's harddrive is probably going out soon.

There several software you can download for free that would check the status of your harddrive and check to see if any read/write error was logged into the harddrive buffer.

I use Ultimate Boot CD to troubleshoot PC and check the status of Harddrives, but there are several different software out there that you can use to check the status of Harddrive to determine if it going bad.
Click to expand...
Is a bad harddrive something that would fluctuate? This morning the laptop (at my house) booted up, loaded Windows, went to browser, did everything as fast as any of my own computers, no problem. That is, is it possible for a harddrive to have "bad" days and "good" days?
 
Reba said:
Is a bad harddrive something that would fluctuate? This morning the laptop (at my house) booted up, loaded Windows, went to browser, did everything as fast as any of my own computers, no problem. That is, is it possible for a harddrive to have "bad" days and "good" days?
Click to expand...

Of course! I believe CW will have a new series sonn called Almost Human, and the feelings of created being figure prominently!

(They are Androids, but same principle.) :P
 
If the laptop is using wifi, switch to RJ45 direct line from the router and turn off wifi at the laptop. My guess is the wireless connection is trying to find your old wireless network.
 
VacationGuy234 said:
If the laptop is using wifi, switch to RJ45 direct line from the router and turn off wifi at the laptop. My guess is the wireless connection is trying to find your old wireless network.
Click to expand...
At her house I did disable wifi and used RJ45 connection.

At my house, the wifi worked fine.

But the laptop desktop (non-internet) functions were also very slow, such as opening up MS Word or the Control Panel, or shutting down. It wasn't just the internet.
 
Reba said:
At her house I did disable wifi and used RJ45 connection.

At my house, the wifi worked fine.

But the laptop desktop (non-internet) functions were also very slow, such as opening up MS Word or the Control Panel, or shutting down. It wasn't just the internet.
Click to expand...


How long since you used the laptop? Is it possible it is downloading updates to XP or protection software?

Are there any other computers on the new network using up bandwidth?

Have you run virus protection scans on the new network to see you picked up a virus?

Open up task manager and see what performance looks like on the new network. You can also check if you have enough page size as well.
 
Bottesini said:
:hmm: It doesn't make sense it would be perfect at your home and slow at hers without some variable in the environment.
Click to expand...

my thought exactly.

Paging Dr. House.... Paging Dr. House....
 
Reba said:
You're right. Do you think that's the same for mine, and that changing locations was not really the reason? Just a coincidence?

I want to be sure before investing any money in HD's.
Click to expand...

Try one.

Ultimate Boot CD - Download the UBCD

It's free and use live cd (won't overwrite file on your hard drive) to diagnostic your hard drive to find it's prove that hard drive is no good or whatever.
 
Reba said:
Is a bad harddrive something that would fluctuate? This morning the laptop (at my house) booted up, loaded Windows, went to browser, did everything as fast as any of my own computers, no problem. That is, is it possible for a harddrive to have "bad" days and "good" days?
Click to expand...

Yes because if there a cluster going bad on the harddrive then it get marked off not to use that cluster.

If harddrive is new that it okay to have a couple of bad clusters at the beginning of it life but if it 5 years old or more then one cluster going bad probably mean more soon to follow in short time.

The slow down is causing by harddrive doing rewrite and marking down bad clusters on the platters and once it done then it would speed up again until more bad clusters start appearing again then it slow down to rewrite and relocate/repair those files.

Like I said in my earlier post, download Ultimate Boot CD or a software that can read the logs on the harddrive chip itself to see how many errors it have written to the log already. It the log shows it producing a bunch of errors then you can be sure that harddrive is going bad and that your lucky you have a chance to backup any important files before it no longer recoverable.

Same software should be able to allow you to run some test on the harddrive to see if any errors was detected during test and written to the log.


.
 
Seriously, it could be a bad hard drive but the reason I asked about your login that you may have a bad profile in one account but you said both the admin and the limit user account. But just what TechBill explain, if you said that your laptop working fine everyday at your place? if that is true, then it's not the "cluster" issue.

What you can try is to run cmd (click start then click run and type in CMD)
in Command screen, type in sfc /scannow and hit enter. What is does it scanned all the corrupted files and clusters and repair it. Once complete, it will need to reboot to "update" the files.

This will take about 5 to 30 minutes depending on the size of hard drive. Then it should create a log file after it completed.

See how that goes.
 
TechBill said:
Yes because if there a cluster going bad on the harddrive then it get marked off not to use that cluster.

If harddrive is new that it okay to have a couple of bad clusters at the beginning of it life but if it 5 years old or more then one cluster going bad probably mean more soon to follow in short time.

The slow down is causing by harddrive doing rewrite and marking down bad clusters on the platters and once it done then it would speed up again until more bad clusters start appearing again then it slow down to rewrite and relocate/repair those files.

Like I said in my earlier post, download Ultimate Boot CD or a software that can read the logs on the harddrive chip itself to see how many errors it have written to the log already. It the log shows it producing a bunch of errors then you can be sure that harddrive is going bad and that your lucky you have a chance to backup any important files before it no longer recoverable.

Same software should be able to allow you to run some test on the harddrive to see if any errors was detected during test and written to the log.
.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. :)

I'll get a chance at checking that out next week. This week is my final project/final exam week.
 
SneakerNet said:
Seriously, it could be a bad hard drive but the reason I asked about your login that you may have a bad profile in one account but you said both the admin and the limit user account. But just what TechBill explain, if you said that your laptop working fine everyday at your place? if that is true, then it's not the "cluster" issue.

What you can try is to run cmd (click start then click run and type in CMD)
in Command screen, type in sfc /scannow and hit enter. What is does it scanned all the corrupted files and clusters and repair it. Once complete, it will need to reboot to "update" the files.

This will take about 5 to 30 minutes depending on the size of hard drive. Then it should create a log file after it completed.

See how that goes.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Will check this next week.
 
Back
Top