Lappy borkeded, troubleshooting help requested.
Need help troubleshooting this laptop.
It crashed unexpectedly just before EPIC, and it wouldn't turn back on, but I didn't have time to mess with it, so I just left it. While I was gone, Betsy turned it on because the printer is hooked up to that system. Apparently it stayed up long enough to get her stuff printed, and when I got home I walked in to see that it was on, but the screen was totally frozen. Betsy has no idea how long it was like that, but the whole base was very hot to the touch, so I cut the power and let it cool. Later, it turned on and ran, but froze up within a few minutes, and wouldn't turn on again.
Well, the obvious answer to me was that it was overheating. After it cooled, I opened up the back, and took out the each to remove parts, and started dusting with a can-o-air. I should have done it outside. While the cats w2ere still sneezing, I reassembled the system, and it booted and ran for a few minutes before freezing again. I left it off for two days, and averted my eyes while I was in the room with it.
When I try to tuen it on now, I only get the boot splash screen, then a single underscore flashing in the corner. I desided to run memtest86 to see if that would find anything, but that test came up AOK. A day later, and it's still just a blinking underscore when I try to boot.
Any ideas on a next step for troubleshooting? I'm thinking 'change out the HD'. But I don't currently have a spare laying around, so I'm open to ideas.
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System detail:
HP g60 - all stock parts
Windows 7 32
It crashed unexpectedly just before EPIC, and it wouldn't turn back on, but I didn't have time to mess with it, so I just left it. While I was gone, Betsy turned it on because the printer is hooked up to that system. Apparently it stayed up long enough to get her stuff printed, and when I got home I walked in to see that it was on, but the screen was totally frozen. Betsy has no idea how long it was like that, but the whole base was very hot to the touch, so I cut the power and let it cool. Later, it turned on and ran, but froze up within a few minutes, and wouldn't turn on again.
Well, the obvious answer to me was that it was overheating. After it cooled, I opened up the back, and took out the each to remove parts, and started dusting with a can-o-air. I should have done it outside. While the cats w2ere still sneezing, I reassembled the system, and it booted and ran for a few minutes before freezing again. I left it off for two days, and averted my eyes while I was in the room with it.
When I try to tuen it on now, I only get the boot splash screen, then a single underscore flashing in the corner. I desided to run memtest86 to see if that would find anything, but that test came up AOK. A day later, and it's still just a blinking underscore when I try to boot.
Any ideas on a next step for troubleshooting? I'm thinking 'change out the HD'. But I don't currently have a spare laying around, so I'm open to ideas.
--
System detail:
HP g60 - all stock parts
Windows 7 32
0
Comments
http://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=6565
So, would do as suggested above to start, probably HD.
Can I run chkdsk from a bootable usb stick?
Can I run chkdsk from a bootable usb stick?
I wouldn't expect any miracles from chkdsk, but it is worth a try. If you need another hard drive and you can wait, I can ship you one about 12 days from now.
Passing a chkdsk just means the drive is okay on a file level. Booting off that drive and reliably reading/writing is a whole other can of worms.
Before you do anything else, while the drive is hooked up to that other computer, run speedfan and view advanced SMART diagnostics to be sure that the drive doesn't have pending/bad sectors or other worrisome issues.
Once backed up I guess I would reinstall Windows, and if you still have problems it's probably fair to assume it's some other hardware. Like @Thrax said, you can run memtest overnight.
Would it be possible to peak at your CPU temp in bios to see how it is during idle?
I don't see a place in this BIOS where I can check in on the proc speed.
No need to back up HD. There is nothing essential stored on this system. If I could find my wallet of OS discs, I would try reinstalling Windows. :/ I guess the next step is scouring the house for that wallet.
For now, I'm considering this system a lost cause. However, I happen to have a Compaq lappy sitting around which is (hopefully) only missing a HD. Since this HD seems fine (CrystalDiskInfo says it's 'good'), I'm going to move it into the Compaq, and get one working system out of them. Perhaps if I have more money later for spare parts, I'll try again to figure out what when wrong with the HP.
Thanks everyone for your troubleshooting help and diagnostic tips.
Either that, or get info on how to make a bootable 8GB or bigger USB stick with an install image on it, and have a valid key for the image you put on it.
If you want, I can find you the spare OPN and pricing. The rest of the parts are probably just fine and you can do a swap, but depending on how old it is, might not be worth it. And unless it's an Envy, whatever you do, don't send it in for post-warranty service. :P
The underline cursor blinking is BIOS trying to transition to a boot, you can understand that or do, yes, but missing boot sector will not let it boot and DVD made without bootablity function will leave the cursor blinking forever symptom while the SATA controller is good. I have even seen scratched DVDs do this.
My Lenovo has a program DVD made for Lenovo, and three data DVDs, one of which holds the Windows image that is loaded by running the program that is loaded from the first DVD. If you interrupt the running of that program you have to start over. I have DONE that.
And no, the underline cursor blinking is not the BIOS trying to complete boot transition, not on any HP made in the last 4 years or so. It's already past Protected transition and hanging at AH=01h. I know for fact that it's hanging at 01h because DVD boot isn't working - it's doing disc load check and never returning, indicated by the drive not spinning up. MAYBE hang at 04h with 00h loop. And a scratched DVD does not "never load." It goes into an AH=42h, AH=44h, AH=01h, AH=00h loop.
If it was not the SATA controller, it would have returned error at 00h, 15h, 09h, or 02h and disk diagnostics would have failed. Disk diagnostics on an HP will also pass on a faulty or failing controller - which I've seen first hand - because they only perform S.M.A.R.T. and not indirect access tests.
And the reason the Lenovo restore breaks if you screw up DVD1 is because step number 1 is to perform a Windows CE installation into a RAMDISK or to the existing recovery partition (IBM never fixed the issue where updating on-disk broke recovery media, and Lenovo won't bother.) Otherwise, you could never transition to disc 2 because it would be trying to read DLLs on disc 1.
As to HP, I had little experience with HP itself, will bow to your surperior knowledge.
Definitely lift the DVD-ROM though - it's a standard, reusable part.