Most BIOSs report SMART failures now but downloading a linux live CD and booting to it would be easier than pulling the drive out
If your hard drive is failing and has SMART it will pop up an alert when starts up.
It is safe to boot with the live CD, unless you run the “install” it will make no changes to your system.
Thanks for the link. I have downloaded the file and burned it to CD. Put it in lappy’s drive and it starts up. It is running the test and ARGGGGGGGGGGGG ARGGGGGGGGG ARGGGGGGGGGG - Great Dane is now very scared, as Dad’s vein is protruding 2 inches out the side of his neck- the stupid lappy SHUTS DOWN during the test. No BSOD, nothing just complete and total power off.
What does that mean now? Is it the memory? Is it the hard drive? Is it possesed? I am getting frustrated here as I don’t have a clue what the problem is. Obviously it is hardware, so unless someone has another idea to narrow it down I guess it is going to be a proccess of elimination and I will put the old HP hard drive in and see if that solves the problem. If that doesn’t do it, then I will purchase some new memory.
UPDATE: I ran the memory test program for the wife while typing this as she was wondering why I look like I could murder. It did the same and shut down, but this time it ran four times as long as the first two times. What does that mean? Why would it run longer now. I am now going to go and sit in the fetal position in the corner while waiting for a reply. I am a broken man, the lappy has won. I concede …:smack:
What model number is the laptop?
SATA under XP can be a tricky thing. You may have two options here:
Find the SATA driver for the laptop, install on a floppy, and include it during the XP installation process (or if you don’t have a floppy drive follow a procedure such as this: No floppy XP on SATA install)
Configure your BIOS to present the SATA to the OS as an IDE drive
Option 2 is much easier.
Thankyou both for the suggestions. I will try the Linux boot CD first and see if that gets me anywhere, if not I will pull the drive, but as I mentioned above I will try the HP laptop drive in it and see what that does. It has been gathering dust for sometime now so I will pop it out of that lappy and put it in this one. The current drive is an SATA if that helps.
I read this on a few forms and asked about it upthread where someone said that the newer motherboard and BIOS’s eliminated this issue in XP. However it is worth a shot as it is very easy to do. I will go and explore the BIOS right now and see if I can figure out how to change it to IDE. I am assuming it is just as simple as changing the option designation in the BIOS. If the drive is a SATA (it is), then will it operate properly if it is labled as an IDE in the BIOS?
Update: I have gone to the BIOS and changed the hard drive designation from SATA to IDE, rebooted and tried to finish the XP installation, but ended with a shutdown. No BSOD this time, but total shutdown, so it doesn’t appear that this is the problem. It was worth a shot though.
That’s odd… how far along did the installation get?
Do you have the model number of the laptop you’re working with?
I would say at this point you are looking at a pet project not a cost or time (or blood pressure) efficent fix. It may seriously be worth a diagnostic from a local shop who can try swapping out ram, or a hard drive, and see what happens without you needing to purchase those items just to test a theory.
If the laptop was built after say 2007 it is highly unlikely to need a sata driver I have seen maybe 2-3 in the thousands that come through our shop over the years that have that issue.
stop7b’s are going to be hard drive, motherboard, or some aspect of the communication between them (drivers, cables, flaky power to either)
The installation under the changed BIOS setting went about 30 seconds, it was picking up where it failed before. And my apologies for not answering the question sooner. The computer is a Acer Aspire 5517
I am getting that feeling as well. I would hate to take it into a shop because new laptops are so inexpensive, why bother paying almost as much to repair one as buy a new one. Still, I will try my extra hard drive and see where that leads me .
Cheap laptops are basically disposable in that sense yes but thats just like buying a cheap car, don’t complain about the price to fix it, take a look at the headaches that cheapo laptops are getting you, part of the price of more expensive units is often better build and component quality.
A common problem with laptops is overheating. They have very small heat sinks that get clogged very easily - especially if you have a pet.
It should be simple enough to pop off the back of the laptop and clean the heatsink, but you would need to find good instructions specific to your machine and be careful to follow them.
I’ve done it once on an old Acer laptop and it was fairly straight forward, but there can be a lot of variation between these machines.
This is starting to sound very much like an over heating problem. Put the laptop aside for a few hours and see if you get any further in the boot process. If the times between failures seems to get progressively shorter the more you try, then I would put money on it being an over heating issue (not a lot of money mind you 
).
Update: Day 4 The Sunshine Breaks Thru the Clouds
Well, you aren’t going to believe what I tell you next, nope no way you are going to believe it.
I decided to put the hard drive from the HP into the Acer and see if the hardrive was the problem. I get the hard drive from the HP and take the cover off the Acer to swap the drives. I remove the Acer hard drive and discover. ACER uses a different pin interface than HP?!?!?!? WTF, you mean to tell me that there isn’t an industry standard among hard drives in laptop computers? Every single desktop that I have had you could swap hard drives between them. But, no not Acer. In fact I imagine some designer at Acer proposing this different kind of interface to his boss, the boss asks why and the designer replies “Fuck you, that’s why”. ARGGGGGGGG.
Part Duex: So, irritated as all get out now and contimplating just how much this drive is going to cost me I put the drives back into their repective lappy’s. Just for giggles I boot up the Acer to see if I put the hard drive back in correctly and to see if I did any damage. Well, that was 20 minutes ago, as of right now XP has continued it’s installation and is currently at 52% in setup. No shut downs, no BSOD. WTF? Is it possible that the problem the whole time was a mis-seated hard drive and by taking it out and putting in back in I reset the pins properly? Or does God just have a wicked sense of humor and is upstairs rolling on the floor laughing at me? Really, could that have been the problem. (Of course it could as it seems to be working).
Anyways, if everything goes as planned this wil be my last update on this issue. I will continue to respond to post as I now have a vested interest in doing so. I appreciate all the help that all of you have given. It certainly make the whole ordeal easier havning someone to vent to. THANKS EVEYRONE!
Update Day 4, part II: Remember in the last update I said I wouldn’t be posting any more unless there was a problem? Well, HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA yep there is a problem.
Instalation completed and I go to boot to XP for the first time. I get the XP splash screen, everythimg is looking good and ARGGGGGGGGGGGGG the stupid &&@"!$@@&& thing just shuts down. Why? I guess it has to be a heat issue then, what else could it be. I am now going to open lappy up and clean it. I will try not to use a hammer to get the case apart (although that would feel so good).
To be continued…
Update: does anyone really know what time it is?
Okay, because I couldn’t resist I turn it on again after it sat powered off for 45 minutes. XP starts and setup of personal settings begin and it shuts down. Thus leading me to no other conclusion than a definite heat problem. Does anyone know of a good site that shoes case disassembly? I am viewing it on my phone so to the point would be nice. I will keep the updates coming. And on another topic, does anyone know the early signs of a psychotic break?
That one time I popped open a friend’s old Acer, it coughed up a hair ball that scared the cat. :eek: Good luck.
Well, I got the bottom case “paritally” open. I am too tired to try to do much more than that tonight. While it was open I took compressed air and blew into it, the fan and the vent. Started that sucker back up and installation procceeds. It has been running straight for about 45 minutes now and no problems! So, when all is said and done it certainly was an overheating issue. I will take the case apart tomorrow or so and get in as clean as I can.
One thing I did notice. Prior to me opening it up and blowing it out I wasn’t feeling any heat from the vent. Now that it has been blown out I can feel a considerable amount of heat coming from the vent. That means that before instead of being transferred to the outside it was just doing an “Apple II” and heating itself into shutdown.
sometimes if you look at the intake side of the fan/heatsink assemblies you will see a little pad of what looks like felt . its not, its a compacted pile of fuzz, hair, dust, etc. you probably had such an obstruction and finally got close enough to dislodge it.
I don’t know why you made this so hard on yourself kinda insisting the companys got something against you or something.
You have to approach such problems with cold logic to eliminate the possibilities. You should have first downloaded a ubuntu or knoppix live cd to verify if it is a harddrive issue by simply eliminating it as a factor. 3rd step after that would be to simply boot from a live cd. If that fails, then attempt to use memtest. If computer is still borked past that point, it gets messy. But they are made for the cheapest price possible so what do you expect, they sometimes fail.
Throwing in extra variables by trying to install an obsolete os is a bad idea, the sata drivers alone will waste your time and probably cause you more headaches, never mind if the laptop manufacturer bothered to supply xp drivers on their website at this point. Xp is rapidly reachiing end of life and support at this point.
Since you figured out the fan is dead, you should go back to installing windows 7.
You can get a replacement part probably ripped out of an old machine on ebay for next to nothing.
I am not blaming the designers for the laptop overheating. What I said was that in desktops every single hard drive I have ever installed has used an industry standard connection and would work in all desktops. That appears not to be the case with this particular laptop. It seems to have a different connection than most. Now I am not all that familiar with the inner parts of laptops, so maybe the one in the Acer is the industry standard and the one in the HP isn’t. The point is I was trying to inject a bit of humor in a very frustrating situation. When you are working on a problem for literally days and things aren’t going right, humor generally is very theraputic. If I have somehow offended you I apologize.
As far as the fan, the fan is working fine. Apparently there was dust or dog hair or something inhibiting the cooling effect of the fan and vents. All appears good now.
However, just in case anyone here thinks that is the end of the story, well not quite. I got XP installed and booted up and then discovered that XP didn’t support the wireless adaptor in the laptop! I have not doubt that a search of Google and possibly another question at SD would provide the necessary work around I decided to reinstall Windows 7 since the problem was not with that OS and was an overheating issue. And quite honestly, I liked 7. Well, I started the install process using the Acer recovery disc. This is a 5 disc process and takes about 2 hours from start to finish. I started the recovery, I was about 10 minutes from competion and the dog walks over and his paw gets snagged on the power cord, pulling it out of the computer. I forgot to put the battery back in, so the installation is toast. I have to start over from the beginning! It is a never ending problem.