Laptop going bad (maybe)...what might be getting sick?

Hard drive sounds like

I don't have a lot of experience with laptops so i would check a lot of different things.

1: Battery condition and the condition of the plug in charger.

2: Power options to see how it's shutting down.

3: Actually shut the machine down at night and see if the problem persists with boot in the morning.

**4: Remove and re-seat the hard drive. It might be making contact when it's hot but losing contact as it cools.**

5: Run checkdisk/f to see if there is any corruption in the file system.

6: Blow the machine out with compressed air. The processor cooling fan might be choked w/ dust.

7: Run a S.M.A.R.T. test to check the condition of the hard drive.

8: Have your anti virus run a boot time scan to see if there are any problems there.

9: There are a whole bunch of files that have to load during boot. If one of those is bad it can make the boot up hang into a blue screen.

10: Maybe try system restore if the problem is more software than hardware related ?

11: If available ... run a hardware diagnostic from BIOS

12: See if you can figure out what the hiberfil.sys system file is doing. See how large it is. What happens is that a largish file is created when the computer is getting ready to enter hibernation. When it's awakened that hibernation file loads so that you're in the same place as when the machine went into hibernation mode. If that file isn't right it won't re-awaken right.

You could try disabling the hibernation mode & then restart. That should dump your existing hiberfil.sys file and a new one will be created when you re- enable hibernation mode. Read up on this first before attempting though.

On most Dell's, you can press F12 when you first see the Dell Logo on the screen. That'll bring up a boot options menu. In there, you should have an option for a Hardware Diagnostics (Without even loading the operating system). I'd run the diagnostics before anything else. If the hard drive is failing, get the important data off of it ASAP!

What is the OS?
Has the HDD been defragged and error checked?
Do you PAY FOR antivirus?
Have you run scans?
Do you have a spyware/malware program? What is it? Do you use it?
Are the updates current?
How large is the HDD? How much is used?
How much memory?
What is the % processor usage at normal usage?
Are there any error messages? What does event viewer say?

I am currently experiencing the same exact problem with my dell. I took it into geeksquad and they diagnosed a bad hard drive. I will know if there are any other issues soon enough; but for now, that is what it sounds like.

I agree- backup.

I'd personally buy a hard drive that's larger than what you have, this: PartedMagic - Partitioning, Cloning, Rescue, and Erasing., and I'd clone that sucker. You don't want to clone to a smaller drive (Same size may be just a little smaller), so buy larger than what you have. Hook both drives into a desktop PC, boot from the Parted Magic disk, and clone. You'll creat an exact copy of the drive, so there will be no downtime at all.

That's what the repair shops do. Trust me- I own one.

Not to your problem but in the past when I have started having difficulties I would go to "Control Panel". I would check to see which programs have been added very recently. Often when I remove that program the problem goes away. Good Luck, Mike

I'd buy a Western Digital or a Seagate. Both are good, but I think WD has a slight edge.

I'd go for a 500 GB. 275GB means that it's a 320. You could get a 320, but Clonezilla will not be happy if it turns out to be even 1KB less in space. I'd spend the extra $10 for a 500GB.

Here's what I'd choose for daily usage (This isn't a gaming laptop, right?) : WD Blue WD5000LPVX 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com

Sawmill
It’s not the HD that goes into hibernation, it’s the OS taking a picture of current settings and writes an image of it to the HD before POWER OFF.
Turn off hibernation all together and do a full power off before you do any more diags on the system.
Avoid suspend mode also.

The Dell Diagnnostics Accessed from the Boot Menu are independent of the OS. You can run them if Windows isn't even on the drive (As long as the Dell partition is).

I'd run that as a minimum. If you can spring for Parted Magic, it has a program called "Disk Health" (It's real name is gSmartControl). That'll run a comprehensive report. Run the full test, and the conveyance test, and you'll know more about the health of your hard drive than 99% of the computer users out there...

As many people have said it might be a bad hard drive, but its probably not if your pc is still booting fine.

The issue is more than likely due to a corrupted hibernation file.

Do the following.

Boot into windows.
Open the C: drive
Go into the folder options. Check the options show hidden files and uncheck the option hide protected system files.
Go back into C:
You will now see a Hibernation file
Delete the file
Reboot the PC
put the PC into Hibernation
Wake the PC up again to try and reproduce the issue. If you don't get a blue screen your issue is resolved.

This is a common issue with laptops and deleting the Hibernation file will not cause any harm as your laptop will recreate it the next time it hibernates. However if the file exists it simply appends the data. Thats why a corrupted file can easily cause blue screens.

Agreed that it could be a hibernation issue, but I'd run a scan and back up the data- I'm not a gambling man!

Backing up data is always a good practice- I'd rather have my stuff in two places than none!