Working on friends laptop

airbornflght

Ok. So my friend just threw his laptop at me and it boots to the error KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR from what I've read from microsoft it appears that this error means either the hdd and or the memory is faulty. I can tell the hard drive is on its last leg because read times are horrible.

I called him and told him about it, and I recommended getting an 80gb hdd, and two 512mb DDR SO dimms. Right now he has a 40gb drive, and 2 256mb sticks. I'm trying to make his computer a tad bit faster and get it back to normal operation. Would there be anything else failing that could cause these problems? The laptop has just been horridly slow for the last couple months and its gotten worse and worse.

RWB

Sounds like a hard drive to me, definitely get a 7200RPM lappy drive and if possible that extra RAM and with a fresh install of Windows he should be golden until he destroys it again. Maybe pop on some kind of auto defrag as well.

airbornflght

RWB wrote:

Sounds like a hard drive to me, definitely get a 7200RPM lappy drive and if possible that extra RAM and with a fresh install of Windows he should be golden until he destroys it again. Maybe pop on some kind of auto defrag as well.

well, I'm also gonna right a batch file to run every week to backup all his folders onto his external drive. because I got him an external drive, but he fails to actually back stuff up to it. So now I'm having to not only fix it, but back everything up first. I thought about getting him a 7200rpm drive, but wouldn't they suck up the power? right now his drive is 4200rpm, so I thought a 5400rpm drive would be a nice compromise. I just don't want to hear him complain that now his battery doesn't last very long.

I'm going to make this thing idiot proof if I can. The first time he got a nasty virus, this time the hdd is failing without backup. At least this time it wasn't his fault.

RWB

It uses more power but I don't think it's all that much more power... but don't quote me on that. Never cared for battery life as I have a DTR and not something for carrying around with me all day.

airbornflght

He doesn't carry it around much either. How much of a performance increase am I looking at for the extra $25 for going from 5400 to 7200? I just have to be able to persuade him im just trying to get the best for him and not sell him something he doesn't need.

RWB

I have to say... I went from 5400RPM to 7200RPM... I honest to God was only expecting better load times in video games... but the system all around is must more responsive with the 7200RPM drive. Which still confuses me to this day... It's damned well worth it.

BLuKnight

Agreed. 7200 is the best way to go. By the way, I ran into that kernel error once. I removed and re-seated the memory and it went away. Just a thought.

edcentric

The new 7200 lappy drives are fairly efficient.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/23/notebook_hdds_deluxe/
I think that in the summary there is info on many drives.

What mobo chipset/CPU does the machine have? What OS is he running?
It might be worth looking at 2x1GB for memory. It doesn't need to be fast. Prices are low these days.

airbornflght

he runs xp pro. The cpu is p4 2.8. The chipset and processor are fairly well burried so I don't know what chipset it is and whether its a presshot or northwood.

He went for the 7200. So he's gonna go from a 40gb 4200rpm drive with 512mb of memory to an 80gig 7200 rpm drive and 1gb of memory. Not to mention his old drive was so slow because it was failing (it died on me). I think he's gonna think he has a new laptop. I imaging double the memory will help him out leaps in bounds coupled with a speedier hard drive.

airbornflght

Formatting for XP now. Can't wait to see how this laptop is really supposed to perform. He got away pretty cheap for upgrading his laptop. Only $128 in parts. And I prolly won't charge him labor unless he wants to give me something.