Laptop doesnot boot or freezes when it boots

the only thing probably you could possibly try is to shove your windows xp cd into the drive, press F2 to go into BIOS, make the cd rom bootable first, then select yes to boot from cd next boot, when the Xp install page loads select R to repair windows xp, when you come to dos type: chkdsk /p to check to see if the disk drive is bad or marked as dirty. If no errors appear then do this:
chkdsk /r to locate any bad sectors and recover any data. If errors are located during the check skip to the next section.

If it freezes doing any of the two then you know your harddrive is fried.
I hope you can still see stuff on your display, try taking your power cord out of your laptop and rebooting to see if the display comes back.

What?

It could be any number of things. The RAM could have come loose and needs to be re-seated, etc.

I would not be so quick to tell someone that his hard drive is shot.

Sparakot - what kind of laptop is it? I am assuming 56xx series Sager or some equivalent. There is a sticky thread at the top of this forum that has a service manual for this line of machines. It has detailed instructions on how to disassemble and reassemble the 56xx series.

To RULE OUT a bad drive, you could try popping it out and using a USB-2.5" drive converter and see if the drive is readable on another system.

Could be anything really.

i had the exact same symptoms on my laptop. I thought nothing of it, thought a simple format may solve it, it did for a while but now the guys at the shop are replacing the harddrive which is faulty. It got progressively worse, so I advise him not to take this lightly, and that it is with 99% certainty a hard drive issue. Backup your files now.

I hear what you are saying, but that's like telling someone who complains that their car won't start that it is with 99% certainty their starter because it happened to you too...

Anyway, I hope he figures it out and offering advice and experience is always good, I just personally think that there could be any number of reasons for this happening, and to tell someone who came here in a panic, with their first post, that it is absolutely, positively "XYZ" is irresponsible.

Of course, you are probably right, , and then I look like the fool. But that's ok.

Well I find it strange how people like you quickly like to go on their high horse and criticise people for helping someone else when the information is based on personal experience and experience with computers in general. I find people like you quite sick quite frankly. If the ram was loose it would not boot at all. It is the hard drive slowly grinding to a halt as everything was loaded at one stage and then bang everything goes bust.

I gave him two ways to solve the problem to see if its hard drive or not (from the microsoft site) so he can find out himself.

I hope he backsup his files or if he can get into windows run a surface scan to see if the harddrive is damaged on the outside through heat or through bad sectors.

Without taking this thread off course any further - CHILLAX. Notice the SMILEYS in my post. I offered them in good spirits and in jest. I am not on any high horse here, simply cautioning against telling someone that their machine is HOSED without going further into it. Simply because it happened to you in a certain way does not mean that every situation is the same. If it did, then every NON-BOOT post in this forum would be related to hard drive failure...and it's not. Dig?

I'm done here. Sparakot - Good luck, I'd be interested in finding out what the problem was.

Damn, some serious tension around these parts.

So you know, i had almost exact same problem and had to have the mobo replaced because of 'a bad chip' that Sager refused to explain further. Vague...

Anyway, they'll take care of it if you send it their way. but don't be surprised if you get it back and it doesn't work right (still!). That's what happened with me. Grrr....

You're wrong! It was your hard drive. It happened to m....

I kid, I kid...

MOSH:

I too have a problem that is very similar to sparakot's problem. I power on and I either get: nothing at all, just barely boots into windows then freezes or reboots and/or after a blue screen that goes by so quick I cannot read it, or just freezes or reboots when in the advanced startup options menu.
It begun with a random reboot when I was playing a game. This has happened before in the past too. Not until now has it actually posed a problem. Guess what game? Counter Strike. Figures... :P It happened during UT2004 before and nothing bad happened of it. But... my windows firewall happened to be disabled as I was messing around at my friends place, so maybe its possible outside interference actually happened. I was going to reinstall it but now I cant even stay in windows long enough (if at all) to adress the problem causing all this. Is it possible a virus is in my system or some kind of corrupted system files? Sometimes, it asks me for the WINXP cdrom so it can replace a file that is supposedly corrupted.
I had a problem like this before on one of my other computers like a year ago, and we thought that it was that MSBLASTER program but it wasn't. Anyone out to help me? I appreciate it.

Like what was stated before, I prefer to rule out every possibility of what is wrong before coming to a conclusion.

I think I am spoiled because I have worked in IT for the last 5 years and with computers in general for the last 20...I always have a spare drive, drive enclosure, RAM, etc. to work with. I would say try to get your hands on another hard drive - even if it is just a 6GB or something for real cheap and try a reinstall of your OS.

Another thing to try is a Knoppix CD. Knoppix, if you are not familiar, is a complete OS and suite of applications that runs entirely off of a CD. No changes are made to your system at all. Simply download the disc from http://www.knoppix.net/get.php, pop it in, make sure your system is configured to boot off of the CD, and in a short while you should be up and running. Knoppix should be able to mount your hard drive and allow you to browse the files, etc. It may even have support for your networking components and allow you to backup your files to a network location.

I would think that if the system works off of a Knoppix CD, then that would rule out heat as an issue, general PC components, and would more strongly point the finger at the hard drive. If it doesn't run under Knoppix, then I would say it is safe to say that the problem is NOT your hard drive, and start looking at other things.

If you have two sticks of RAM, try swapping them out, and running off of one, then the other, also switching RAM slots - to rule out RAM.

Just some more things to think about.

I'm actually trying that right now. I took one piece of ram out. My machine actually quit freezing as much, but still does occasionally. I managed to get into windows and delete a few big files i had to free space up to like 1.5 GB.
Do you really think its a hardware problem and not an OS or software one? I'll be here for a while so talk to me. :P

I have another question... even if my system needs replacement parts and is shafted, is there any way I can cause it to show up over a network, so I can transfer data to my other computer for backup?

At the current moment, I was able to load up the recovery console before it rebooted or froze up. The freezing or rebooting doesnt seem to be effecting the recovery console.

Right now, im running chkdsk /r to look for bad sectors and repair them.

If it's not freezing in the recovery console, then I would guess that your OS may be hosed. Without getting involved in anything else, I don't think there is any way to get the machine on the network, unless you can get it to continue running in XP (or whatever). Knoppix will most likely allow it to appear on the network, but you may have to do some tweaking to get your files copied over. It would be easiest if you were accessing an existing share over the network with Knoppix, than trying to share out the machine via Knoppix. So say you have another PC with shared drives or a server or something, you should be able to access your hard drive and the shares using a DOMAIN\USERNAME style login and password. If you do not have a domain, then use the computer name.

Knoppix? What exactly is that?
Also, is it possible that the boot sector is messed up? Theres a command FIXBOOT... Im tempted to see what itdoes, but every step that i can take, I take into consideration that I may format my C: drive... :/ What should I do? CHKDSK repaired 1 problem, seems like it was a large one.

ATTENTION EVERYONE:

I think I have repaired my issue possibly using the recovery consoles CHKDSK command. Try this if you are having issues. I'll keep in touch in this thread.

Knoppix is a linux distro that runs completely off one cd, no installation needed. I personally prefer simplyMEPIS as a live CD linux client, there is a memcheck option right on the cd off boot. If you are still getting problems go to http://www.startdisk.com/Web1/ubd/ubd.htm and get ultimate boot disk. There is a crapload of utilities on there for troubleshooting. Finally I must also add, that I had this exact same problem once before, it would just freeze, ice cold solid instantly, and yes it was a dead harddrive...This does not mean that is what your problem is. Oobnooker has some good advice on the external harddrive, listen to him

Well, I was over at my friends place with my Sager today and he happened to give me a burned disc with Knoppix on it. I havent checked it out yet but I suppose I can.

Do I download the file labed WINDOWS ME? Will that work for XP Pro?

Also, I found out it wasn't just a disk problem, I have a stick of RAM thats being weird. As long as that RAM was plugged into my 5680 it would do the reboot/freeze pattern. As long as it wasn't in, my systems been fine.
I guess I can't tell people I have 1 GB of RAM now. :/
Could anyone give me a rough estimate on how much a stick of Kingmax SO-DIMM 512MB DDR-400 PC3200 , MSXC22D-38KX3 is? Im just wondering if anyone can find a good price for it, versus what I've seen.

$65

a windws me boot disk will not work..it cannot read ntfs.

I still have a similar issue i think. I posted about it awhile ago, but didnt get much help. My 5660 will lock at the login screen if I let it sit there for more than 30 seconds or so. More recently (since april of 2004 when I made my post) I have had other locking issues. I watch alot of xvid, wmv, and DVDs on my laptop. 95% of the time the xvid/divx/wmd (almost anything video) will cause my laptop to lock. DVDs play fine if they are just started and left alone. If I skip through chapters, rewind or fastforward very much, it will lock. Since my post I purchased another 60GB hard drive, and have that running in there. I had the intention to send it in for service under the 3 year extended warranty that I purchased. I just havent had the time to do that yet. As far as it being a hard drive issue....it isnt for me. I pulled my original 60gb, and tried to put windows xp on a 12gb that I had, and the new 60gb. The installation would lock at the exact same spot EVERY time. I think it was around 33 min left or something like that. I have heard some people talking about a faulty chip on the mother boards, as one poster mentioned. I hope that is the problem. I just have this deep dread that I will send in my laptop, and get in back in worse shape. This is an odd problem, since it has no problems running some intense stuff. I play star wars galaxies on it all the time. When the locking issue came up, i removed alot of my games from it. I still have Call of Duty, and I played Battle for Middle Earth on it recently. It never seems to lock or crash in games. The temp on my laptop still stays really high..almost to 80...under a good load. I think it still stays around 50-60 when just sitting at the desktop, and yes I have checked, and cleaned it. If you find out anything interesting let me know....

I have a real quick question for the people that have experienced this problem, did the machine go through POST or just be all around unresponsive? If so, it seems I am having the same problem with my Laptop which I believe is a Sager 5660 (Rebadged for a local resller). The machine would lock up (display would be flickering) and need to be rebooted. Sometimes the screen wouldn't come on at all, and after a few reboot cycles it would work again. Gonna try and see if I can reproduce with my Suse LiveDVD now....