HP laptop issues

[Commander_Z]

Hi eveyone,

 

So my brother has been having some issues with his HP laptop recently.

 

Up until a week ago his 3 year old laptop had been functioning without any issue. 2 years ago the wifi card was replaced under warrenty but that's not the issue.

 

He used it on the 10th of March, but didnt use it again until the following evening.

 

It took forever to boot up into windows and began to freeze/lock up, but after a significant amount of time it seemed to function ok.

 

When it intially locked up, he had to force reset the laptop several times to get anywhere after the welcome text came up after typing in his password.

 

He then used it at uni on the thursday, where it was again slow and unresponsive, force closing it due to it freezing.

 

He tried using it 5 days later but the same issues persisted.

 

He's told me it asked to do scandisks/checks twice but nothing he recalls came up bad, he's not sure

 

Booting into safe mode with networking gets us into the desktop, but that's as far as we've got trying to figure out whats wrong

 

TL:DR

 

HP laptop was functioning fine for the past 3 years then decides it wants to take a dump

 

TIA

[xAcid9]

download HDDTune Free and run the health check. Monitor the scan speed, if it really slow or fluctuate erratically, that mean the hdd is dying.

[Commander_Z]

download HDDTune Free and run the health check. Monitor the scan speed, if it really slow or fluctuate erratically, that mean the hdd is dying.

 

Will give that a shot and post back results

 

Cheers

[Commander_Z]

so far its scanned 60GB at speeds flucuating at 75MB/sec down to as low as 58MB/sec

 

It'll scan at around 70-75, then drop to the low 60's/58MB/sec

 

it's a 500GB Seagate drive so it'll be a while

 

Yay for seagate, No???

 

It froze for 2.5 minutes after it had been scanning for 16 minutes 3 seconds

 

It's found 1 bad sector but has resumed scanning

[Commander_Z]

Also whilst in safe mode, the pc is showing a message saying "Turn on Windows Security Center Service, (Important)

 

And another bad sector found

[xAcid9]

Speed is a little bit slow for a 500GB HDD but not significant. Multiple bad sectors mean the HDD is dying, i suggest backup any important file.

[Commander_Z]

It appears that the laptop outright turned itself off somehow, so we've rebooted into safe mode with networking and are running the tool again

 

it had found 5 sectors including two bad ones back to back

[xAcid9]

It appears that the laptop outright turned itself off somehow, so we've rebooted into safe mode with networking and are running the tool again

 

it had found 5 sectors including two bad ones back to back

 

I guess you need: 

 

1. New HDD.

2. Reapply thermal paste if the laptop fan working properly.

[marioo1182]

What are your temps like?

[Commander_Z]

well according to the hd  tune its at 46 Celsius

[kristaps552]

It most likely is the HDD that is slowly giving up.

I suggest you drop at least a 120GB ssd in it and it will work 10x better than it ever was.

[Commander_Z]

It most likely is the HDD that is slowly giving up.

I suggest you drop at least a 120GB ssd in it and it will work 10x better than it ever was.

 

We're looking at picking one tomorrow and buying it

 

there's an OCZ 128GB or a kingston 120  that i'll buy, and reinstall with the spare copy of W7 i've got

[kristaps552]

Get the kingston, OCZ have a bad rep, even though they've now been bought by Toshiba, I still wouldn't trust them... yet. 
You could possibly re use the windows key that was on the laptop, using either jellybean key retreiver or belarc something something (forgot the full name).
Or if it came preinstalled with win8 and there was no licence sticker, there is this tool that allows you to get the key even if the laptop has been reinstalled with a different windows.
I do not know what is it called boot google somethign like get win8 key from laptop.

[Commander_Z]

Get the kingston, OCZ have a bad rep, even though they've now been bought by Toshiba, I still wouldn't trust them... yet. 

You could possibly re use the windows key that was on the laptop, using either jellybean key retreiver or belarc something something (forgot the full name).

Or if it came preinstalled with win8 and there was no licence sticker, there is this tool that allows you to get the key even if the laptop has been reinstalled with a different windows.

I do not know what is it called boot google somethign like get win8 key from laptop.

kingston ae, what was the issue with OCZ??

 

the product key is still attached to the bottom of the laptop, so we could use that

 

It was preinstalled with Win7 Home Premium, and we got an install discs around somewhere

[kristaps552]

kingston ae, what was the issue with OCZ??

 

the product key is still attached to the bottom of the laptop, so we could use that

 

It was preinstalled with Win7 Home Premium, and we got an install discs around somewhere

They would die a lot and quite often. Very unreliable. 

[Commander_Z]

Just an update guys;

 

I brought a Kingston 120GB SSD, installed it and reinstalled Win7 using the existing key on the laptop itself

 

Runs like a new laptop now

 

Thanks for your help, my brother is appreciative of it

 

Cheers