4780 HDD failure

20 months of solid service, but it is gone over to the other side. Still within extended warranty - anyone know if this is typically covered?

Saved to backup disk, but it is a bit dated - any recovery suggestions?

GeekSquad at Best Buy won't replace HD - too much stuff in there for them to mess with (so they said). So if I have to buy and install by myself anyone have any suggestions (old one was 60GB 7200)? What cache and interface? Never done this before but seems not too difficult.

Lastly - had Win XP installed from Sager, but all I have from original package is Sager-Midern recovery disk and Win XP pamphlet. There never was an XP install disk. How do I install XP on new disk?

Couple questions

1) I can acess hard drive through safe mode - in fact last night I created a backup on my external (storage) Maxtor hard drive. Does that sound like a failed hard drive?

2) If I ship the laptop out under the warranty they'll replace the hd with the same specs (60GB, 7200 speed) but they won't return old hd. It'll take about two weeks and cost me shipping. On the other hand, I can buy a 100GB 7200 hd for about $200 bucks and put it in myself. Any comments on the ease of changing hd vs. convenience of having someone else do it?

Sorry about that - I wasn't very clear on the symptoms.

Boot ups were taking a long time - and even once XP was up it took some time for programs to load. This after reinstalling Zone Alarm Pro (because the latest version was crashing) and trying to remove Norton Systemworks 2005 because it too was acting funny (I'd get three notices at startup about "the MSI must be loaded at startup", or something like that). Then it would start to boot up, even giving me the "welcome" screen, but all I'd get after that was an arrow - no programs would load and no windows desktop. I thought I was in over my head so I bit the bullet and took it to the Geek Squad at the local best buy. They claimed they ran diagnostics on it and the hard drive had failed.

Their tech guy refused to put a new hard drive in, however. When I asked about it I was told he was just uncomfortable swapping out the hard drive with my brand (Sager). Seemed pretty lame, especially since they promised they could fix the laptop.

The last backup I had done was a bit dated (I'd put on a lot more MP3s since) and didn't want to lose all that, so I tried booting up in safe mode and accessing the hard drive to copy the files to my external storage drive. Even though it wouldn't boot up normally the safe mode worked, and I was able to copy all the files onto the external drive.

Since it does work in safe mode but still won't boot up in normal mode I suspect it isn't really my hard drive. I wanted to get some opinions of other causes before I did anything drastic.

Tonight it has booted up in normal windows XP2, but has hung up when loading some startup items. There is no activity on the drive - just sitting there. The mouse moves but I can't open or close anything.

I'm pretty sure it isn't spyware or anything else as I had numerous programs run regularly (ZA Pro, Norton SystemWorks, Ad-Aware SE, Spybot, Spyware Blaster, Secretmaker, Spy Sweeper, SpyDoctor and Registry Mechanic).

Since I've now got my backup I'm tempted to try to boot up with the windows recovery disk. Any suggestions?

I tried to run the repair function. Windows disk loaded all kinds of files then took me to Welcome to Setup screen with three options 1) set up XP, 2) Repair using Recovery Console, and 3) Quit without installing XP. Trying 2 gets me to a screen which lists 1, C:\Windows, then asks which Windows installation I would like to log onto (to cancel press enter). Typing 1 then enter I'm asked for the administrator password - I never set up an administrator password! So I hit enter and it takes me to a C:\Windows prompt.

Guess I'll try the setup XP and see how it goes.

So far so googd, it found the existing version and reinstalled a lot of items. It is currently "installing windows" and estimates another 34 minutes.

It said it could not find mtlmnt5.sys, so I skipped over that part since it appears to be for the internal modem (which I never use).

Next up was uagp35.sys. Skipped that too.

...13 minutes to go...

Well, it appears to have gotten hung up about halfway through registering components (13 minutes to go). So close.

Guess I'll try again.

Any idea how important either of the two missing files (mtlmnt5.sys and uagp35.sys) are? Something called the dynamic link library will let me download the latter file for the mere fee of 10 Euros. I'm just wondering if skipping over these files caused the hang up.

Thanks for your help.

That's it - I've finally had it.

After freezing halfway through "registering components" (about 13 minutes remaining) it got progressively worse. The second try got me to 25 minutes remaining, while it crashed on both of the last two with 34 minutes remaining.

I'm giving up and sending it to the Philips people. Let them fix it - that's why I paid for the darn warranty anyhow, right?

last word (hopefully)

Philips warranty people were able to walk me through a reformatting of drive. Took a while, but then reloaded windows and ZA Pro. Then spent half the night installing all the windows updates.

So far so good - looks like it wasn't a failed hard drive afterall.

Many thanks to all who offered help/suggestions.

Is it just this design (4780) or are all these high-end lappys subject to this kind of failure?