Help with my laptop?

[tech-home]

Okay here goes I pretty sure that I need a new hard drive but I'm willing to try everything first. It kept locking up boot so I formatted the drive and hoped to reinstall XP.

CHKDSK found one or more errors (but it appeared to fix them or something?)

Reinstall of XP hangs as it sayd it can't find a certain file on disk (I've tried 4 different disk). palabi.ttf

In Bios hard drive check shows "hard drive failure #1- 07"

 

[elcano]

Several years ago, and against all advice I extended the life of a disk using a low level format (it died several months later). The low-level formating was in the BIOS, but I dont see this option on recent BIOSes.

Probably you can try one of those utility CDs to see what they can do.

 

[JohnWPB]

It looks like a HD problem, especially your BIOS is reporting HD failure. I did have the EXACT problem with a desktop PC some time back, and went an bought a new HD. When I tried to install XP, it also said it couldn't read fies from the CD, and froze. I tried a couple different CD's and still ran into the same problem. I thought, ok New Hard Drive, then it must be the Motherboard or HD controller or something on the board. I bought a new Mother board, processor, and had the new Hard drive. I tried to install XP after putting it all together, and STILL the same problem! I put in a new power supply, thinking the old one may be going and voltage was fluxuating or something... Still didn't work!!!! I was going crazy. As a last ditch effort, I tried different memory. That was the problem! When I put differnt ram on the board, XP installed perfectly the first try! Even though the BIOS never reported a ram problem at post when it was checked.

So to make a long story short, TOO LATE Finding out it was a $50 ram stick cost me around $600! When memory is going bad, it can seem like a HD problem, as it will corrupt data initially in memory, and thus the corrupt data will written to the HD, making it look like a bad drive. Sometimes it is just trial and error. If you have 2 sticks of memory in the laptop, try removing one, if it still happens, switch that one out for the other and trying again.

 

[jrfuda]

I'll search and post a link if I find it, but somewhere you can download a bootable CD image that will test the living #$%@ out of your memory. If there's something wrong with your memory, it'll find it. It's a sure-fure way to see if you have a memory problem, and since it boots from a CD, it takes the OS and HDDs out of the picture.

 

[jrfuda]

OK, here's the link: http://www.memtest86.com/
and here's some reading about it: http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/server...,2132568,00.htm

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I "think" this is the one electron recommends:

http://www.memtest.org/

electron?

 

[tech-home]

I did get it back up but I used a low level format provided by Compaq/HP, botable ISO. The standard DOS format wouldn't work, not sure why. I'll be sure not to store anything without a backup for awhile.

I'm going to be sure to run these test when I get a chance.