fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2078 ]

[ SECRET POST #2078 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2078 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 73 secrets from Secret Submission Post #297.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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typing quick before another laptop crash but i have an hp pavilion dv model machine, which got recalled a few years ago for ~~sucking~~ a class action lawsuit regarding irreparable defects. long story short, i didn't find out about the recall until a week ago, so i can't get compensation (i don't think?) but have no money to replace my laptop. i desperately need to do something though, because it's gotten to the point where it crashes more than two dozen times a day. my BSOD reports always read different driver errors and other stuff so i can't really offer any specifics besides "the whole thing is broken" but i'm pretty sure my machine has significant hard drive corruption.

basically is there any way i can at least alleviate some of the crashing? i need the laptop for school and again i can't replace it because i'm broke (which is fantastic, by the way, i highly recommend it).

try and back up your data on to something first.

a little googling tells me this:

"I posted about the DV series before, it's either power jack failures, OR, they had some designs that used the AMD processors, and had a gap the thickness of a penny between the heatsink and die of the CPU, the only simple fix for that, is to take the heatsink off, and grab some pure copper the EXACT same thickness as a penny, and put some thermal compound on both sides....

Took them long enough to issue the power adapter/jack warranty though."

i've backed up a lot of it already since this has been a consistent hassle for me.

i think if the design oversight was my biggest problem, it's probably too late to prevent any additional damage at this point. i've had my laptop for almost 4 years now and have had significant problems for over 2. i'll look into it though.

iirc you're like the resident computer overlord, right? does anything i've detailed here sound fixable or at least familiar to you?

i know just enough to be dangerous. i asked a friend of mine who knows way more than me (i actually paid her to put together my new desktop last year) and she said she'd recommend making an ubuntu live USB stick and booting off it to see if it runs without crashing in an isolated OS away from the rest of the PC (i have only the slightest hint of what that means 'cuz linux gamers are an oxymoron.) but she's more or less convinced it's a hardware issue.

definitely will try that, thank you.

please do keep us updated. i think your laptop may be a lost cause, but i hope you can get it stable again.

Just expanding on "booting off Ubuntu live" in case others are curious about what's going on.

Ubuntu live is an operating system like Windows XP or Mac OS X. By booting from a USB stick, the information stored on the USB is used to make the computer run instead of the information stored on the original hard drive.

If a bad hard drive is the only problem, booting and running the laptop from another drive (the Ubuntu live USB stick in this case) should not give any BSOD errors, driver errors, or any other errors.

If booting and running the laptop with a different drive (the Ubuntu live USB stick) give similar BSOD errors and driver errors, then the rest of the hardware is faulty. More tests are needed to find out which hardware is causing the errors. There might be more than one piece of faulty hardware.

Sounds like it's time for a good, ol' fashioned reformatting.

Also, switch over to linux. Seriously. I've had excellent success with Kubuntu for numerous laptops. And, best of all, no more blue screen of death!!

i'd love to reformat but i have zero clue where my OS disks are, and i don't know how to go about reformatting without them. if there's a lot of corruption in my machine i don't know if a system restore or factory-setting restore would "fix" these, so i'm worried i'd go through the trouble of wiping all my data from my laptop for naught.

i haven't considered linux much (mostly for compatibility issues, some programs and applications i use frequently aren't widely supported on linux). i'd prefer to stay with windows since i'm familiar with it and it's much more flexible, but like hell i am buying hp again.

predictably crashed the first two times i tried to give details so i'm in the computer lab. fuck that noise.

anyway, i'm running vista home premium on a 64-bit OS (the worst). i can go two months without a crash and then weeks on end where i'm lucky if the thing even turns on.
this week has been the worst by far in the 4 years i've had this laptop. a typical day this week:

turn on machine, log in, within 3 minutes it's crashed. restart, screen won't light up/show anything. repeat this step 4-12 times until the screen works and i'm prompted to start windows. will generally crash 5-6 times at this stage while in the process of booting up. after that i usually see the log-in screen again finally. the last few days i'd be relatively good to go with a few crashes here and there (unless i put my laptop into sleep mode, which would cause it to go through the entire fiasco again).

today, however, it's been eternally stuck in this process. i cannot for the life of me get it to stay on and functioning for more than 6 or 7 minutes. naturally this is buttfuck infuriating for someone like me who has zero tolerance for faulty technology.

like i said i'm convinced there is significant corruption in my hard drive/drivers in general, but i can't know for sure because every time i try to run dskchk it crashes 3% or less into the check.

i've tried all sorts of things, from defragging to different anti-virus software to malware/spyware protection. scan after scan has come back negative for any type of malicious bug in my system, so it's pretty much the system itself that is sucking so hardcore.

the fan has never been good and, like dethtoll said, this model was notorious for overheating because of some design oversights. mine's no different, it's noisy and heats up pretty quickly (my first charger got literally fried like two months after i bought the laptop).

so in short, i know my laptop is a piece of literal shit, and that most of the issues i'm experiencing are due to defects in the machine itself. however it once worked "fine" (in quotes because it's always been quirky and finicky but once upon a time i never had to worry about dozens of daily crashes).

i'd really like to know:
- if there's a way to check for corruption besides the normal chkdsk way, since i physically cannot do it this way,
- if there's a way to reverse any potential corruption or damage to my machine, at least enough so that i have a laptop that at least turns on normally,
- if there's maybe more to it than just corruption (seriously, if any of these symptoms sound familiar to something you know about or have experienced, please let me know; i'll try anything at this point).

Find out which programs you can live without (HP probably starts up with bloatware like HP Customer Center and stuff like that) and boot up with the bare minimum of programs you need for the computer to run. Remove the unnecessary programs from the start-up sequence so they won't load. Also change the start-up sequence of programs you need that automatically load when the machine powers on (like msn messenger - run the program only when you need to use it). I think, at this point, it is best to not uninstall any programs if possible. Hopefully this will make your machine run more efficiently.

And back up your hard drive ASAP. If the problem is indeed a corrupted hard drive, the only solution is a replacement hard drive. Note that the more the drive is being accessed (being read and written on), the possibility of getting more bad sectors increases. Also, if a drive is known to have bad sectors, it has a higher chance of developing even more bad sectors or crashing completely (the drive cannot be read at all).

Look into getting a cheap second-hand old laptop/desktop or possibly getting one on loan from your school. Maybe your friends/family have an old machine you can borrow for a bit. Also, some organizations give out free, older computers in exchange for volunteer hours. See if that's a possibility for you.

i've always had bloatware disabled on startup because it's annoying but it's been relatively ineffective in helping my system run better.

i think your second paragraph is pretty much what is happening with my system, and my stubborn ass didn't bother trying to repair damages until they got too out of control to be fixed.

if there's not way to repair or reverse corruption in the hard drive then i guess it's goodbye to this machine because it sure as hell ain't worth buying a new hard drive for. might as well just get a new machine, lmao.

i've considered getting a "cheap" replacement that will at least do bare minimum (internet browsing, paper writing, etc.) since that's all i really need right this very second. i guess i'll start browsing a little more seriously.

by chance do you know of any organisations by name that trade volunteer hours for computers? volunteering is something i like to do naturally so i'm interested in your suggestion.

Free Geek is one organization in my city that has "volunteer for computers" program - 24 hours for an Intel Pentium IV (CPU), 1GB RAM desktops pre-loaded with the newest version of Ubuntu. Or, build 5 Pentium IV computers and build the 6th Pentium IV for yourself. The computers are several generations out of date but they are good enough to surf the net, listen to music, watch DVDs and load OpenOffice (free, open source word processing program, though I prefer LibreOffice). Free Geek in different cities share a similar goal and method of operations but their exact operation details might be different. The Free Geek near you might offer computers of different specs or require different hours. They should also be a good source of technology-related resources in your area.

If you're looking at really old machines, make sure the CPU clocks at least 1GHz. Anything less will be very slow even with Windows XP installed.

Also, you mentioned upthread that the laptop overheats easily. Do you dust the laptop regularly with a gas duster/compressed air? The computer might stay on a bit longer if it can run a little cooler.

"IS there's a way to check for corruption besides the normal chkdsk way?"

Yes. Do you or your friends have a spare 2.5" hard drive enclosure or a hard drive port? You should* be able to take the hard drive out of the laptop, put it in the enclosure/port, and access it as a removable hard drive (like a portable or storage disk) with another computer and run chkdsk on it. Chkdsk might get stuck 3% in and the disk might start clicking but chkdsk itself shouldn't crash.

You can try running chkdsk under the Ubuntu live drive too, if the live drive can detect the laptop's hard drive.

*Laptops are even more notorious for their specially-designed/proprietary hardware and software than brand-specific desktops. If the hard drive does not have a standard SATA and power socket, it probably can't be read with the usual, store-bought enclosures/drive ports.

"Is there's a way to reverse any potential corruption or damage to my machine, at least enough so that i have a laptop that at least turns on normally?"

IIRC, there is no way to un-corrupt a hard drive but you might be able to recover enough data to make it run better. Based on what I remember, chkdsk scans the disk for errors and if it finds any, it marks the bad sectors as "areas to not use" and, if this option is selected, attempts to recover data from the bad sectors to sectors that aren't bad. The recovered data may be incomplete (a bad sector means difficulty in/inability to reading and writing the sector of disk) which is not good news, and there is no guarantee the sector the info is recovered to will not become bad later as well.

How long have you had your laptop? When did it start acting up? The sort of problems that lead to recalls tend to show up in the first few months of use -- your problem may be nothing worse than a corrupted OS or bad hard drive.

First thing I'd try is reloading the OS. Find the install disc that came with the laptop -- or google instructions on making one -- and reinstall. Accept all the options for formatting.

If that doesn't fix things, and you have a USB stick, you can try running your laptop off the USB. Not as a long-term solution, but to figure out if all you need is a new hard drive. Google "OS on USB" for options to test with. If it runs, even if very slowly, without crashing then you can start googling for instructions on replacing the hard drive. And for deals on hard drives, of course.

had it for almost 4 years now, and it's always acted up in the sense that it's always had little quirks, like starting up without the sound drive working and requiring a restart to fix it, etc. these were earlier problems that were all fixable with a reboot. it's been about 2 years that i've had BSOD issues specifically. the beginning of this year was pretty bad, but over the summer it was a little better. the last month has been the worst ever though.

i have no clue where the OS disk is, i've been trying to find it for a few months, but i'll keep looking. it's my best bet, i think.

thanks for the flash drive suggestion, didn't even think of that. that'll be a good way to determine if it's the hard drive i need to replace.

The last time I had a computer that fucked around that badly, it was a motherboard issue. If you're certain it's hardware problems (software can be handled by wiping the hard drive and reinstalling windows as a last resort), all you can do is drop cash for replacement parts or a new PC. If you ever come into a little money, new netbooks go for $199 on Best Buy, used ones go for even less on Amazon.

Until I could afford to replace my old PC, I only booted in safe mode so it would crash less (crashing didn't stop completely, but I could use it with less grief than usual). I had to stop doing anything fancy like running multiple programs at once, or running any heavy programs (no video, limited music), or using any special features like sleep mode or hibernation. I mean, I think I only used documents and the internet, saving like crazy in case of inevitable crashes.

Anyway, I wish you luck.

Man, are all the laptops they made in that timeframe fucking defective? I don't have any help because my overpowering hatred of HP after spending $1000 on an HP tablet computer (from before "tablet" meant "iPad thingy") that had its wireless break after one year and then a year later, it overheated so bad it killed its own motherboard/graphics chip. But no, nothing I could do about that. I'm glad to hear they got a class action lawsuit over it, but it's too bad because your model just might be very, very close to mine, meaning I could have been compensated into instead of having that hunk of trash sitting around for three years.

ANYWAY SORRY HATRED SPEWING OVER. Help suggestions now!

It sounds like your hard drive might be messed up, honestly. I like all of dethtoll's suggestions. Running off an isolated OS for a while could help see if its hardware or not. And I also think your laptop is a lost cause but that stems from my eternal hatred. I don't know what to tell you about OSes. I get wanting to stick with Windows; fuck, I'm the same way. You can get Windows for $100, but my guess is that you don't have that kind money either, because a cheap laptop won't be much more. I think. I haven't bought one since my HP bit the big one and I bought a netbook. Umm. Let's see; I mean, it could be a RAM issue. Those are random as all heck in my experience, and hard to diagnose. There should be a way to scan your RAM for any corruptions. And hell, if you need parts, I'll send you my whole fucking HP. It's that or I burn it to release the sin.

My comment will look less creepy if I'm logged in, I think. Or *glance at icon* worse.

RAM tests exist but I don't know how to run them on Windows computers

I've found 5 yr old Intel Core2 laptops on Craigslist for under $100 with XP preinstalled lol

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[ SECRET POST #2078 ]

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