Hard Drive Failure in Laptop (I think)

[horstmann]

I think the harddrive is going out on my wife's Sony Viao. It is about 3 years old and has been completely locking up recently. I cannot CTRL-ALT-DELETE or anything besides power off when this happens. I ran memtest and found one really bad chip of RAM. I took the bad one out and memtested again for 12 hours and it was just fine. I thought that was the problem.

Well, the laptop still locks up completely, although not as much. So, I used the restore discs to format the hard drive and restore to factory settings because I thought it was a software problem, but it still does it.

Is it possibly the hard drive, or could it be something like the motherboard, or could it be overheating. I don't think it is overheating because it will run sometimes for hours just fine and sometimes after 2 minutes it quits. What is a good way to test if the hard drive is failing? Any other things to try than what I already have, because I am about at a point of just throwing the thing away.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[horstmann]

anyone?? bump.

 

[sithscout80]

I would suggest running Check Disk. You can run it by doing this:
Start > Run > cmd
In the Command Prompt, type "chkdsk C: /F" (without quotes).

It will say:

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

Answer "Y" and then restart your computer. As Windows boots up, it will automatically run check disk. Check Disk doesn't work perfectly but it is a good place to start with.


Also, when you said you used the restore discs to format the hard drive. Was it a full format or a quick format? Full formats take longer and identify bad sectors on the disc.

 

[Mondoman]

Of course, the first thing to do is to make sure any data that your wife wants to save is backed up. If the drive finally dies while you are trying to figure out what is wrong and before you backed up her data, you will need to clean out a sleeping spot in the garage.

 

[cs120ban]

I think the harddrive is going out on my wife's Sony Viao. It is about 3 years old and has been completely locking up recently. I cannot CTRL-ALT-DELETE or anything besides power off when this happens. I ran memtest and found one really bad chip of RAM. I took the bad one out and memtested again for 12 hours and it was just fine. I thought that was the problem.

Well, the laptop still locks up completely, although not as much. So, I used the restore discs to format the hard drive and restore to factory settings because I thought it was a software problem, but it still does it.

Is it possibly the hard drive, or could it be something like the motherboard, or could it be overheating. I don't think it is overheating because it will run sometimes for hours just fine and sometimes after 2 minutes it quits. What is a good way to test if the hard drive is failing? Any other things to try than what I already have, because I am about at a point of just throwing the thing away.

Thanks for any ideas.

Well it could the HD. You need to test.
1. reinstall OS. If you get errors during installations, 50% is the old HD.
2. reinstall OS in new HD. No errors during installation, 100% is the old HD.

I did that to a tc1100 and rma the HD to toshiba lately

 

[horstmann]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I did a disc check before I reinstalled the operating system. It said that it found nothing. I then ran the CD's and let them do whatever they do to reinstall the system. I should have formatted the drive on my own, but I thought this would be good enough.

I put smartfan on the computer this morning and the SMART info says that it is fine. Is this info reliable?

I did notice that the power cord is getting loose and when you bump it, it goes to battery power and back very quickly. It has a tendancy to lock up right then. Would a new power cord be tighter and fit good or is it inside the computer that is loose. Also, could this be causing the lockups and or hardware problems? I don't have much experience troubleshooting laptop hardware, and probably wouldn't even know how to get the computer apart.

Thanks for all the replies

 

[qwertycopter]

Generally you hear weird noises if the hard drive is going to crash. Grinds, squeals, whirs, etc. You also might notice the HDD light going on and off a lot when the laptop is not running anything. You may also notice the performance of the PC going way down, especially when copying/transfering big files.

I was thinking power problem after reading your first post. Probably the number one cause of weird intermittent problems. You say it is loose at the back of the laptop. Does that mean it wiggles around or that it just pulls out easily?

Maybe one of the easiest things would be to test a different compatible cord/power supply. Otherwise it might be the power connector on your motherboard is damaged/loose. You'll have to call Sony on that one.

 

[burn-e86]

have you updated the windows?
installed an antivirus? if its norton it uses alot of resources
it sounds as though it could be a virus or adware problem as well though if its directly after a reinstall....
i had a problem where my laptop kept on switching off after running a CPU heavy program, i found out later that the heatsink paste had completely dried up and it kept on overheating and shutting off. i never fixed it cause i could never put it back together lol

 

[horstmann]

The power cord wiggles around alot. If you wiggle it and the battery is out, the computer shuts right off. I don't have another cord lying around to try at the moment. I wish I did. I was looking at Dell's power cords at work trying to decide if they will work.

Last night I was installing programs on it after work, and I had to restart to finish installation, so I did and the computer would not come back on. It wouldn't even get to the SONY screen at startup or go to the bios. I don't know if this is motherboard problems or not. Any ideas???

If I can't fix the computer it is probably going in the trash. Sony wants 300 and some dollars for any problem other than motherboard and LCD, and 800 if it turns out to be motherboard or LCD. I can buy a new one for that or a little more.

 

[qwertycopter]

Wow that does sound like a power problem on the motherboard. It's nothing you can fix (well you could try to find the motherboard on ebay or something... but....)

In its current state, will it come on with only the battery connected? It might be that the back power connector is loose. That might be able to be repaired cheaply at a computer/electronics shop.

The other day my roommate's laptop froze up on him. We rebooted and it got to the WinXP login and froze. Verified the power cord, reboot, and it had the same problem again. I took some canned air and blew out the exhaust fan and keyboard. A lot of dust and junk came out... and the thing booted up fine! Go figure.

 

[horstmann]

I finally broke down and ordered new RAM and the computer started up and runs just fine. Anyway, just wanted to let you know what was wrong.