Laptop help

[Llamanaut]

Hi all, need some advice, i have an aging Dell Latitude which three days ago made a horrible clonk noise and began running even more slowly than usual. Fearing a virus i set about reformatting the WD HDD i had attached to it and ran a full virus scan... didnt find a thing.

Tried a rollback to a time when life was great but was informed that i cant do this

Laptop is still running painfully slowly and now additionally neither my home pc nor laptop recognises my hard disc drive. Im thinking of using both HDD and laptop as a set of door-wedges... can anything be done or shall i prepare myself to shell out some cash for a new laptop???

[Martyn_Bannister]

Hi all, need some advice, i have an aging Dell Latitude which three days ago made a horrible clonk noise and began running even more slowly than usual. Fearing a virus i set about reformatting the WD HDD i had attached to it and ran a full virus scan... didnt find a thing.

Tried a rollback to a time when life was great but was informed that i cant do this

Laptop is still running painfully slowly and now additionally neither my home pc nor laptop recognises my hard disc drive. Im thinking of using both HDD and laptop as a set of door-wedges... can anything be done or shall i prepare myself to shell out some cash for a new laptop???

Hiya,

May be a drive problem. When they start to fail they can get really slow because they are attempting to read sectors which don't want to be read.

I take it the WD HDD is external USB? Does the laptop run slowly if you power off entirely, remove the USB drive and then power on again? I not then the external HDD is probably on its way out.

If it's still agonisingly slow without the USB drive then the internal drive may be on its way out. These are usually standard 2.5" drives and (since I take it that the warranty ended years ago?) you have nothing to lose by attempting to replace it. Before you do that though, I'd do a CHKDSK on it and fix any errors. Next step after that is a complete reformat and re-install. If the drive is on the way out though then each of these fixes will only delay the inevitable

Of course a new laptop is nicer, just slightly more expensive

[simon84]

I'll go with the drive problem aswell. No too much of a pain to sort out. As already advised run CHKDSK and see what that throws up. If its dead just pop the old one out and see what it is in regards to sata or ide and then get yourself a new one, probably about £40 from aria or somewhere like that.

I had a neighbour that was about to launch a £500 laptop because he thought it was dead, he was most pleased when I had repaired it for him with only the cost of a new HDD and an hours labour.

[Llamanaut]

chkdsk running as we speak... i'll report back when it finishes in hmmm lets see....about 2 weeks time!

[Uranium235]

If its a drive change, lets hope its a friendly unit to get into. I swear some laptops are made deliberately hard to open up. Good luck

[simon84]

Have to say every drive change I've ever done on a laptop has either been a panel removal underneath or a pop out drive on the side. I've never had a problem, but yes lets hope its one of those.

The most awkward PC I ever had to repair was one of those Dell terminal type ones that the secretaries have at the hospital or doctors, now those are really put together to stop anyone having a poke around inside.

[Llamanaut]

ok... chkdsk reported no errors... i restarted and no change... still slow as you like... anything else i can do?

[Aldebaran5]

I Had a WD internal drive that went clunk 1 night and it just would not go anywhere. In the end I had to invest in a new drive, but luckily it was an extra drive which I had backed up on the data I think your drive is knackered so you may want to invest in a new one.

Keith

[Aldebaran5]

Just as an aside, how many of us back up our data when we get new computers. I would think that its very few. Backing up data is I think very important.

Keith

[Damnit]

Assuming it is a drive issue, then before it does go completely, make sure you back up all your personal data, photo's etc ... maybe use the Windows system transfer tool to back this lot up to an external drive.

I am very happy to gloat in the fact that I have implemented a fairly simple but robust backup solution ... daily/weekly backups are done to a local NAS drive, monthly backups taken from this to another external USB drive which we drop off at a mate's house.

For all this I use a very powerful but free tool from "2 bright sparks" called syncback ... you can get it here:

2BrightSparks | Freeware

[TopHouse]

Have you tried doing a CClean on it?

link here, it's dead easy to use and cleans the rubbish off your machine :-

CCleaner - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download

Next, because a virus scan doesn't show anything, doesn't mean there's nothing there. download and run spybot S&D on the machine :-

The home of Spybot-S&D!

If all the above reveals nothing obvious, my 2 guesses are a memory module going U/S or hard drive.

If you right click "my computer" and select "properties", is it showing the correct ram for what's installed?

Do you feel confident in opening the trapdoor and removing one memory module, testing to see if it's right, if not swap the memory module you removed for one still in situ and test again, ie, if you try each module on it's own, if the problem is still there, it's rare for more than one module to fail.

Have you defragged the hard drive? How much free space is on it, if theres very little free space on a HD it gets VERY slow.

Try finding a cheap HD on ebay, try it in the machine, if that fixes it, fine, if not, just ebay the HD for whatever you paid for it.

[atharh]

Just as an aside, how many of us back up our data when we get new computers. I would think that its very few. Backing up data is I think very important.

Keith

Very true...I've been stung in the past with lost data.

I currently use mozy.com to backup my data offline. They offer unlimited storage for about $55 pa (~£36).

[Martyn_Bannister]

ok... chkdsk reported no errors... i restarted and no change... still slow as you like... anything else i can do?

You can try starting her up in "safe mode" (keep hitting F8 during boot to get to the menu). If she runs like the wind then it's almost definite it's a software problem... One of the PC clean up tools might well help here.

As already advised, a data backup (if you don't already have one) is a wise move right now

[Ogri]

Yes probably the drive on the way out. USB memory sticks are handy for quick and easy backup and data transfer, and pretty cheap now too.

Ccleaner is very good, and another I find very good is Superantispyware.

[Llamanaut]

ive tried malaware, ccleaner and spybot... defragged it and chkdsk'd, i do think the hd is on its way out, its a netbook so the os is on the hard-drive.... therefore.... i think its new laptop time, will check out the back up software too, i only really use the laptop for stellarium, the eos facility for widefield and for webcam imaging... its served me well for the past several years, i'll be sad to see it go

[TopHouse]

You do know that you can get a new HD for it for next to nothing don't you. If you don't feel confident to do a clone & replace of HD, I'm sure one of the lads lives fairly near you that will do it, failing that, send it to me and I'll do it for you for a VERY modest price.

[slartylite]

try a utility from the drive manufacturer e. g seatools this will tell if drive is a gonner,although if drive is not detected in bios it is not a good sign.

[Llamanaut]

dion i might take you up on that me old mate!

[barkis]

Your first post indicated a "Horrible Clonk Noise" which suggests something has moved inside the machine. If the HDD had suffered, I doubt the machine would run at all.

Memory has been mentioned as a possible cause, so check the modules and see if they are both still in place an dretained by their clips.

Ron. Also check your CD. DVD Drive. Take it out altogether, as if it is faulty, you might be getting a power drain slowing things up.

Ron.

[Damnit]

^^ its a netbook so there will be no DVD / CD / optical drives in it.

Acronis disk director is a simple and handy too that will help you clone your hard disc ... make sure you take all the data on all hidden partitions too as this is where the restore for the OS will be.

[barkis]

^^ its a netbook so there will be no DVD / CD / optical drives in it.

That rules that out then:)

[TopHouse]

You can get that clonk from an armature strike in a HD, in basic speak, a hard drive is a number of usually glass or ceramic wheels coated with a magnetic coating, much like old cassette tape. These spin at whatever RPM the drive is. ie 7200rpm the armatures are little readers/writers on supports that move across the wheels and they hover only microns above. Interlock your fingers at 90 degrees to each other and imagine one hand is the wheels and the other is the heads/armatures, so they move across the disks reading and writing data. A knock can cause a head strike, as can the tiniest particle of dust not even seeable by naked eye, also can be caused by an electronic failure or surge. A strike doesn't have to be against the wheels (which normally would create numerous data errors) it can also be against the parking point, or even the extreme edge of a wheel, not causing data loss/corruption but misaligning things making them VERY slow.

Unusual noises from HD's is always a bad sign.

[thesatanbug]

Never mind cleaning the hard drive. Have you tried cleaning the puter?

Nine times out of ten it's dust clogging up the cooling fan that gets a pc all sixes and sevens. Try a vacuum with the brush attachment on the ports to get as much dust out as you can. They pack it in so tightly that even a small deposit of crud can cause over heating and upset all the major components. If that helps a little, then open it up and vacuum as much as you can using a fine ½” paint brush to remove any build up. If that don't work, then you have a bigger problem.

You'll be surprised how dust deposits can affect the electronics and mechanics in seemingly unrelated ways.

[Llamanaut]

well this morning woke up to the beautiful sound of a purring laptop... yesterday i went absolutely mad with it and ccleaned, malawared, spybot'd, chkdsk'd and seatool'd it.... i removed everything but the necessary files and then finally defragged it overnight.... this morning no clonk

still no joy with external hard drive though, it fails to be recognised by netbook or desktop

[Llamanaut]

ps... and now its slow again... sounds like the internal hard drive is constantly working