Laptop going bad (maybe)...what might be getting sick? - Page 2

It's just a suggestion but when i'm troubleshooting i try to determine if it's:



1: A hardware problem

2: A software problem

-or -

3: Both a hardware & software problem.

I do a lot more towers than laptops but the laptop failures seem to be related more to software corruption. Their file systems get really screwed up. It's mostly in the files that boot the computer but i've also seen some cyclic redundancy errors.

I'm not seeing this very often with tower.

It's pure speculation at this point but i suspect that it's got something to do with the batteries getting old. It may be the chargers also. You know how it is .... people don't want to fork over 60 bucks for a new battery so they try to get as much out of it as they can ?

Gawd ... i recently ran into a dell laptop that was running windows 98 and was in perfect operating condition. The battery was perfect too. The previous owner must have kept right up with it.

Anyway .... software or hardware ? Maybe test that Hard Drive before replacing it so that you know it's getting bad ?

Originally Posted by Abuilder

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.

AMEN to the above advice. Bears, among other animals "hibernate"
imo, laptops, altho not strictly an animal, can become one with hibernate and suspend, turned on.

[QUOTE=sawmilleng;242953]Data is backed up onto a thumb drive.

Good thinking and kudos to you.
------------------------------

I am also amazed on the breadth of knowlege on this forum. And at the guys who are freely sharing it!!! Makes me feel good to be part of SMF.
Thank you all!!
Jon.

Jon, wait until you get the bill, for all this "free" info

Hiberfil.sys can be a problem to delete. It's a system file so oftentimes windows won't let you delete it.

I've used the following procedure with good results.

What is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It?

It's amazing how much disc space you can recover sometimes !

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

I've also had my eyes opened reading about the recent flurry of posts about shipping used hard drives and getting very few at the receiving end that tested OK after the jostling of shipping. They must be a lot less robust than my personal experiences with hard drives have been...I've never had a problem....

Jon.

Just a word up where you're traveling South with your electronic stuff.

9/11 and the twin towers were a big deal for us here in the states. Since that time, the Department of Homeland Security has put a lot of security measures in place. Airport security has really been beefed up with all kinds of scanners & X-ray machines. You have to take your shoes off and walk through a scanning machine. It's pretty safe to assume that your baggage will be X-rayed before it's loaded on the plane.

Your electronic media might or might not be okay. All depends on if it's shielded inside of a Faraday cage like the enclosure of a laptop or tower. An anti static bag might protect your thumb drive & memory cards ?

It might be better to treat that stuff as carry on luggage if you're flying and make inquiries at the security gate.

( ummm ... thread drift. )

That other thing with the buyers & sellers looked like it might turn ugly. Maybe i'm in la la land but my personal opinion is that the buyers & sellers here are people of integrity. If the unprotected hard drives & ram sticks didn't arrive at their destination intact there may be more to the story. Perhaps not quite time to get out the torches & pitchforks ?

There's what you know, and there are other things that you don't know. It stands to reason some of the security measures that the DHS put in place aren't out in the public domain. It wouldn't make sense to disclose all of your security procedures to people intent on committing terrorist acts.

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

xrays do not affect hard drive integrity, or solid state media integrity (at the levels which the machine bombards your laptop, a ct scan would be a whole different affair and very very bad for your laptop.

It's all situational. ( no easy answers )

Awhile back i discreetly posted a link that had to do with U.S. government countermeasures to the threat of acts of bio terrorism. I believe it was from a reliable source. It described in detail what can happen to certain materials when exposed to the countermeasure. One of the materials listed was electronic media.

The post was there for a time and then later was no longer there. ( Probably just as well .... i was going to request that it be removed anyway. )

There is a problem that's been quietly brewing between sellers and buyers for awhile now. What's happening is that hard drives, MEMORY sticks, and even processors that were known to be good when shipped are arriving damaged. This kind of a problem creates mistrust of you the buyer. It could be misconstrued as fraud. Fraud is best defined as THEFT by deception. Judging by what i've seen there is very little tolerance of a thief in this place. See what i'm saying ?

This could turn ugly with the buyers and sellers pointing the finger at one another.... each assigning fault.

Wouldn't it be better to attack the problem and not the person ?

Rough handling during shipping could account for some of the hard drive failures but there are a couple of problems with that explanation. The first is that the HDD needle goes into a park position when the hard drive is powered down. That will afford it some protection from the shock of impact. The second problem is that rough handling doesn't quite account for the problems with failed memory sticks & processors. ~ There may be more to the story. ~

It may simply be that it's nobody's fault. Just a case of collateral damage.

The solution would be to develop better standard practices for handling, packing, and shipping ?

Sorry ... not picking on you Wolf. Just trying to get everybody to step back and take a breather. There may be other explanations besides that guy is a crook and the other guy isn't doing it properly.

Peace !

Awhile back i discreetly posted a link that had to do with U.S. government countermeasures to the threat of acts of bio terrorism. I believe it was from a reliable source. It described in detail what can happen to certain materials when exposed to the countermeasure. One of the materials listed was electronic media.

The post was there for a time and then later was no longer there. ( Probably just as well .... i was going to request that it be removed anyway. )

Sorry about that scrappah.
I used the report a post on that thread. That thread wasn’t going very well to begin with for a buyer/seller thread and posted in the wrong category.
I just entered in Report a post. I think scrappah meant this post for a different thread.

It's all good. Thanks for clearing it up A.

I wanted to tread very lightly there because it is a sensitive matter. Divulge just enough info to give everyone pause to re-think and then yank it. We get a lot of traffic here. Once it had served it's purpose there was no need for the link to be up.

Doesn't matter how it got gone.

Just picked up a Western Digital 2TB external hard drive and will set it up to mirror my drive in the laptop.

Then--Going to print off this thread and go through the suggested solutions to try.

I took a look for hiberfil.sys and couldn't find it in my root directory. Didn't try a search for it, though.

Jon.

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

I took a look for hiberfil.sys and couldn't find it in my root directory. Didn't try a search for it, though.

Jon.

You probably won't be able to locate it that way in Win 7. If it exists, it's buried deep within the OS. Hard to get at.

Could you check something ? Go to control panel ---> Power options. Find out if your laptop is using hibernate, sleep, or hybrid sleep when it powers itself down.

If it's using sleep mode that could be another factor in the mix.

I keep thinking about the error message you get in the morning about the pc not powering down correctly the night before. If it's correct that begs differing possibilities as to the root cause.

Scrappah,

When I close the lid, it is set to go into sleep mode. It is also set to go into sleep mode if I leave it open and walk away after about an hour if on 120V power, sooner if not.

My son was wondering if there was a setting somewhere that allocated memory for caching the information needed to resume when starting up in the morning. If that was the case, it might mean that the cache size is a little too small.

Jon.


PS-- not sure about the difference between sleep and hibernate--haven't noticed hybrid sleep, but I'm sure there's also catnap, dog flop and 'frickn out of it sleep modes, too......I'm assuming one powers down farther than the other...