Notebook Boot Problems / External HDD Recommendations

[KoRo]

Hey all you computer geeks, my girlfriend's notebook is having some issues and I was wondering if some of you might be able to help us out.

It started last night when she was running her computer. It got extremely hot on the bottom and shut off without warning. This has happened many times before. (Already I think I know what the problem is, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet). When she tried starting it up, it boot up normally to the windows logo, then in an extremely fast second, flashed to the BSOD then immediately restarted.

This cycle has continued no matter how she tries to boot (safe mode, etc). I had her hop into BIOS and run a Hard Drive Diagnostic Scan, but it continually failed after just a few minutes of scanning (The message was literally "Hard Disk Scan Failed").

I can't say for sure I know exactly where the problem is, but I can speculate that it's either the CPU or the Hard Drive itself.

Specs:
HP dv2715nr Notebook
1.9 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-58
160GB Western Digital Ultra ATA Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7150M


Any advice or info would be useful. I'm planning on buying an ATA-6 to PATA adapter so that I can recover her data.

Also, on a related note, I've been looking to buy an External Hard Drive for backups, etc. I'm looking for something in the 500GB range. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[Particle]

Sounds pretty clear that it's going to turn out to be a hard drive failure since it BSODs on load and the included HDD diagnostic fails.  Once you get the adapter, you'll be able to confirm that quickly or not.

[Lidge Farkley]

1st of all, I'm not a geek. :-p

Here is what I would do:
1) boot it into the bios and look at the temperature monitor.  It might that the computer could be overheating.
2) if it is in fact overheating, use a can of compressed air and blow out all the vents on the laptop... prepare for dust and do it outside.
3) reboot the computer again.
4) boot into bios and look at the temperature again. If it is around or above 60 C, it's still a heat related problem but if it's down to normal... well... it's something else.

If it still has these problems, there are many options.  Here are the ones I would follow:
1) make a BartPE boot disk with a copy of the windowsXP, BartPE (http://nu2.nu/pebuilder/) and any plugins you might need for data inspection/recovery on a hard drive as well as the virus scanning tools that come with BartPE (stinger is one of them, for example).
2) boot it up using the BartPE disk and run whichever diagnostics will determine if it's a bad drive or a virus.
3) wait around for a while.
4) If it is a bad drive, try to set it up as a network accessible drive and copy off the important stuff to an other computer.  (don't bother copying programs)
5) If it is some kind of virus, find out which one and do some thing to kill it... at my previous tech job we used AVG and it killed just about everything.  Very special virus programs usually have special tools for free at corporations like symantec (norton) which you might need.

Bad drive extended info:
1) carefully extract it from the computer to determine which kind of drive plug it uses.  Hook it up to some thing like this: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=%09%09+%09+USB+2.0+to+IDE+SATA+2.5+3.5+Hard+Drive+Converter+Cable
Boot up your computer with BartPE, hook an external drive and this drive up to your computer and dump the files you want to keep on to the external drive.  You could hook it directly to your computer with out using BartPE, but if it has some dirty virus... well, you get the idea.


Uh... as far as external drives go, I buy my own parts and put them together, so I am of little help.
But, if I had to make a 500GB ext, I'd probably go with some thing like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392003

Yeah.
I am almost certain your computer problem is heat related, though, and if not there were 3-4 malarkeyty virus related hard drive "failures" when I was employed.  In any event, you better hope nothing important is lost from there!
Peace!

[Particle]

^ His OS didn't just start BSODing.  His BIOS has a hard drive diagnostic that's actually showing failure as well.  It doesn't appear to just be a SMART test, either, since it "scans" for minutes before failure.  Hard drives drop like flies as it is.  They all fail.  Heat causes it to happen much more quickly.  I'd say a $3 adapter is probably the easiest way to go--just plug the drive into a desktop and do any real testing/recovery you want.  Messing around with PE just just an invitation for a headache.

[KoRo]

Thanks for the info.

*edit*
I bought a WD 640GB External for $70 on NewEgg just as their deal was ending (I had 2 hours to spare). Yeah, it was kind of an impulse buy, but I think it was a good deal.

[Lidge Farkley]

Particle:
Though you are right in some respects, I tend to find removing and installing hard drives from lap tops is a grand headache in itself; avoiding that headache is my preferred action.

The reason why I am also not jumping for popping that drive out is that on at least 3 occasions at my computer repair job* we had the same exact symptoms as this which were all remedied by blowing the dust out of the affected machine and then repairing the disk with a PE disk**. (*I worked in a campus residential hall repair facility where I worked on hundreds of successfully repaired laptops over 2 years of employment)

Of course... I still am curious if it is a heat related problem... tell us, Koro!
We won't really know if it's completely a drive or heat (or both) related problem until then.

**edit: It's also a bit easier to back up/restore with a functioning hard drive.
Also... KORO, run the Jellybean key extractor on that machine/disk and write down all the CD keys/products that it gives you; you WILL need those for a re-install if you want to maintain her full/legal/functional copy of Windows/Office/etc.

[Particle]

I can appreciate your experience, but please don't assume I have none.  I've been a company's senior net admin for quite a while now, so I've seen a thing or two mahself.  heh  I'm not saying you're wrong.  Your ideas are completely practical.  It doesn't hurt to offer another angle that you did not, however, when it too is valid.

[Lidge Farkley]

Yeah, I didn't mean to take it towards the direction of shoe size.. heh.. I didn't mean to imply that you had no experience either.  I just offered my angle of "I hate opening up malfunctioning notebooks" and applied it liberally to the situation... possibly to the extent of misconstrued idealism! lol!
;-)

Still, I want to know if it's a heat issue because that seems to be the most common machine efficiency problem out there... speaking of which... it's probably time to blow out my laptop.

[KoRo]

Hey everyone, I have a similar but unrelated problem....

I received the ATA-6 to PATA adapter, and after about an hour of fiddling around with it, I was able to get the drive recognized on bootup.
Sidenote: I had to use a mini jumper from a 15ish year old hard drive in order to get the computer to recognize this hard drive as a slave. I was damn lucky too. Chalk one up for pack rats.

Anyway, like I said before, the drive can be seen and recognized in CMOS. Unfortunately, it can't be seen in Windows.

The info:
The drive is from an MacBook. Yeah, it's a Mac, so of course that's a reason for trouble. Though, I read somewhere that MacBook hard drives were formatted using FAT32, so...I figured the files could at least be SEEN in Windows, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm not looking to boot off of the Mac HDD, but I would like to back the files up on my newly arrived External. Ideas?

[Lidge Farkley]

Ah...
Well in that case...
I am confused about what kind of adapter you used.
If it is an internal adapter, that might be part of your problem, but I am not sure because I never used an internal adapter on a malfunctioning macbook hard drive before.
I've always gone with one of those USB to IDE/SATA external adapters and had my disks sitting on the counter.  (e-bay has these things)
Macbook drives are not FAT32, they're MacOS Journaled... whatever that means.

I think that perhaps you might need to contact a friend with a mac and use an external usb adapter on the old drive.  Hook both the external and the old drive up to an other Mac and copy what ever you need.

[KoRo]

Nevermind. I got it working. I had a slight hard drive malfunction of my own for a day, but everything is back up and running and the disk's files are on my external HDD. Next up...my gf's hard drive (aka, the original problem that this thread was started for...)

[Lidge Farkley]

This thread is becoming quite the comedy in my mind!
Did you forget to set your master to "Master with Slave" or "cable select" setting?
That's what I usually forget to change, initially.

Also.. good to see that you got it worked out; I could not remember if I had dumped my macbook drive on to an XP box or not... whoops!

Let us know how what happens next... hehehe! :-D

[Particle]

It's probably formatted in HFS+ so Windows won't auto-letter it.  Since it's showing up during POST, when you get into windows type this into Run:
diskmgmt.msc

You should see the drive listed there.  If so, it may just need a drive letter assigned to it if it is indeed FAT32 or if not, you'll need a special program that will let you read HFS+ drives.  There are demos for such apps out there.

[KoRo]

That's pretty much the way things went for me, Particle. For some reason, my HDD stopped working for a while, but then magically decided to come back to life, and this time I could see the Mac HDD. Anywho, now all that's left is to replace all the screws on the iBook. This is a headache...


*Edit*
Chalk one up for HP. Even though their systems run hot, the HDD of the HP laptop was MUCH more accessible than the one in the iBook. Also, I didn't need any ATA-6 to PATA adapter to hook it up. Turns out that the HDD in the HP Laptop was SATA. Perfect!

[Earthlore]

I think a new hammer needs to be in play... Like a Titanium hammer maybe???  Sorta like for slashing theres the anchets sword. Maybe a few more stronger armors... and one GodLike armor that has the same DEF and MAGICDEF.. And as for the quests with rings... There should be like 3 levels to each quest. Level 1 gives you low wins and uses like 5-10 rings. Level 2 gives you mild wins and uses 15-20 rings. Then level 3 Gives you high gains/losses and uses 25-30 rings