Computer Help

[evil-frosty]

Hello, so i am pretty sure that either my hard drive is failing or suffering from some virus(it might be my motherboard, but I honestly do not know enough to tell, and I am guessing that it is my hard drive). It is an asus lap top that I bought from xotic pc online. I sent it to asus tech support (a mistake), they fixed a minor key board issue, a non existent issue with the display, and then left the main issue untouched.

Now the issue that I am suffering from is that my laptop failed to boot up one time, and then did its startup recovery thing which failed, I tried doing a system restore but apparently for some reason there were no recovery points to be found. After all that I reinstalled my windows(windows 7 if it matters) and I was finally able to boot up, after that though my computer ran way slower than it did before, after any amount of activity it would blue screen and then reboot, after the reboot it would either fail to boot up or go to a blue screen after booting up briefly.

My laptop model is U36S. It currently has a 750 GB Hard Drive and 6 or 8 GB of RAM if my memory serves me right. Can anyone tell me whats wrong? And how I could possibly fix it? Thank you.

[leafman]

If you can, boot into safe mode and run a virus scan (assuming you do have some form of anti-virus), if it doesn't find anything run check disk (start>run/search>chkdsk.exe), when the window opens I think all you have to do is hit enter, someone else might know if you should add any parameters before hitting enter. That should at least be able to identify if you are having hard drive problems.

[scurv]

If you did a re-install and it is running slower, I would say it is a hard-drive fault. Try running a scan disk and tell me what it says


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgqG6p8FLbU

http://nixtalks.net/upgrade_asusU36


This looks a little more indepth then i would toss a noob at. But you should be able to manage it. Although read the walkthoughs, Think about what you are doing before you do it. And if you do not feel comfortable with this take it to a mom and pops pc shop.

The hard drive looks to be standard enough so you are looking at maybe 150 ish out of pocket (And maybe quite a bit less if you shop around) Buy this part new!

[Hyde]

Sounds like a hard drive issue, It's a pretty common problem out of Asus lappys, especially if you've had it for more than a year and a half to two years.

Not too difficult to fix yourself, if you're confident in your "putting dozens of tiny screws back where they belong"-fu. Otherwise, take it to someone who is.

[Hyde]

I also feel compelled to note that Asus has this weird thing where even if something seems that it could in no way be a hard drive problem, it still is. I had some trouble with faulty USB ports, and hey, a new hard drive was the fix.

[scurv]

Asus lappys power supplies (internal) provide JUST enough power(normaly), So if the HD is pulling to much and loading down the power supply, it could cause problems elsewhere in the system due to the chip sets not having sufficient power.

[Hyde]

That would follow logically with what I've experienced.

[scurv]

PC's and desktops need several voltages, so you have your 5v 12v, -5v, -12v. Your 3. whatever it is. They are suppose to be regulated. But those small laptop HD's take 5 volts and often they are fed from the same buss that feeds the motherboard and usb's
If the stepper motor in the HD is starting to crap the bed, Then quite often it will pull more current then it was intended to, And thereby pulling more load then the powersupply was designed to handle.

When that happens the voltage from the supply will drop some. And although it might be sufficant to keep the hd and motherboard working. Many usb toys might take issue. I know the current that many usb ports can source is regulated( we hope). So that can (But not alwase) isolate the mother board and such from the usb being over drawn.

[evil-frosty]

Thank you for the feedback guys, I did not have the chance to do that scan as a lot of family stuff was happening this weekend and I am rather tired from it all. The laptop is under a year old, about 9-10 months old when it started having its issue. It is still under warranty, and I am going to see what happens when I send it in again though this time to them through xotic pc since they hopefully will hound them a bit about the warranty.

On a somewhat related note, this laptop does not have a CD drive, I need to plug one in to use CD's. When I try to install Icewind Dale 2 it won't transfer a folder and stops the whole installation. Is this just because it is through a USB or something wrong with the portable CD drive or the installation disk? Thank you again.

[Hyde]

You may have to run the installer itself in compatibility mode- Win 7 gets pretty finicky.

Otherwise, you may try finding it online.

[scurv]

Good luck evil! Laptop warrenty centers tend to be very hit and miss. Take photo's before you send it in.

[Hyde]

Good luck evil! Laptop warrenty centers tend to be very hit and miss. Take photo's before you send it in.

A thousand times this. I sent in my tower so they could repair it after my watercooler had sprung a leak (not my choice, but I wasn't presented with another option), not only did they not replace what I'd ask, apparently I spent $60 bucks on shipping merely to have them drop the thing, bending a corner (the access panel doesn't sit right now). Gooood times.

Apparently, letting it sit on a shelf for awhile would've solved the problems I was having, since it works mostly fine now.

[scurv]

The horror stories I have to tell about repair (cough cough) Centers. Quite often anymore I have seen them using parts that show signs of use. Now I am not saying that used parts are Bad But parts like hard drives have a life span of 5ish years before they begin to live on borrowed time.