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

Hi,

I have a Dell Vostro laptop that has just started to act kind of funny on the first startup after sitting overnight.
Since there are lots of guys rebuilding computers on this forum I figured I would ask the group what they figured I might be having go wrong...

I usually shut it down at night by simply closing it up on Google chrome and in the morning open it up and hit the power button and it picks up where I left off the night before.

For the past few mornings I open it up and it starts booting--ends up at a blue screen with a blinking cursor or blinking dash in the upper left hand corner. Won't do anything.

I restart by pulling the battery and rebooting. It pauses on booting and says something about an improper shutdown and asks if I want to restore the session or just reboot.

I have tried restoring the session but it goes to the blue screen and flashing cursor.

The only way to restart is to do the reboot.

What are these things suggesting? a hard drive going bad? flakey memory chips?

Thanks!!
Jon.

I had close to the same issues happen to my previous computer. Shortly afterwards the hard drive crashed.

I just remembered .....

With the Dell computers you can go to dell.com product support and then do auto detect. Once they have identified your laptop they will run a free hardware diagnostic for you. If it's hardware related ... like a failing hard drive ...they're likely to pick up on it.

They also have the latest driver software updates available as well.

Guys,

Thanks for all the great suggestions!!!

It was also suggested to me by my son to to a google search for something like "Win 7 hangs after startup from hibernation". I tried that and there are a ton of hits so it sounds like a common problem. I haven't found any specific answer there but some suggestions about changing settings to not let the hard drive hibernate, that is, stop. Which leads me to suspect the hard drive, like several of you guys have already told me.

A new hard drive is so inexpensive nowadays that I probably will change it out right away. Some of you may have seen the posts about a job I have where I'm helping take apart a sawmill, ship it to Chile, and put it back together. Well, that hard drive currently has at least a thousand photos I have taken of the mill being dismantled and a bunch of related stuff, like contracts...So right now I really don't need a crash. It would be the scream heard 'round the world....

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....

I'm staying pretty close to some memory sticks and also leaving the photos on my camera for backup, too....

Jon.

Jon, back up, back up all those photos and other data U can't afford to lose, like pronto :-), Ed

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.

Then clone the drive to get ready.

I've got a 275 GB drive....less than half full. Probably hard to get one that small now.

I like the idea of cloning the drive. It seems straightforward, and the price of the software is reasonable.

I have regularly defragged my drive--about every 4 weeks. I use the free versions of Avira, CC Cleaner, and Malwarebytes. Avira runs every day. The others, about once per month.

I have Win 7 prof, 64 bit. The cpu usage is pretty low, usually under 10%. No error messages.

What drive is considered a good, rugged one? The guys who test the used ones oughta know!!

Jon.

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.