HP G61 Laptop Extremely Slow, Can't Get Into Windows

Discussion in 'Software' started by jephph, Jun 24, 2012.

  1. jephph

    jephph Private E-2

    I've got an HP G61-429wm Laptop here. It's running really slowly, and won't boot into Windows, or even a Windows disc. On bootup, it will show the underscore for ~15 seconds, then it will start to load Windows (I believe it's Windows Vista). Once it's done with the loading screen, the screen will go black, for hours.
    The computer was running very hot, in the upper right section especially. I opened it up, and cleaned out the fan, and it's running cooler now, but it still runs really slow and won't boot into Windows.
    When I try to boot to a Windows disc (I've tried Vista 32 and 64, as well as Windows 7), it will get to the load screen, go black for a few minutes, then show the default background, with a cursor, and I can move the cursor around, but there is nothing to click, and no combination of buttons does anything either (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Windows+R, Esc, Enter, etc) Right click also does nothing.
    Other things I've tried:
    UBCD- got in and ran clamscan (I could only scan the boot sector of the main drive, the partition wouldn't show up in a normal scan.
    Also tried AVG Recovery CD- came up clean (not sure if it actually scanned the Windows partition though)
    Tried removing memory sticks one at a time (there are two total, I tried many combinations)
    I tried to get into UBCD4Win, but it would pop up a Blue Screen every time (0x7B), I looked that up, and it seems fairly common, but none of the fixes seemed to work for me.
    Also, went into BIOS and set everything to default.
    Can't get into Safe Mode or Last Known Good (same result, black screen, forever)
    None of these things had any effect.
    Any help would be much appreciated.
     
  2. tgell

    tgell Major Geek Extraordinaire

    If you still have the recovery partition intact you could do a factory reset. All programs and data after purchase would be lost though. Are you trying to retrieve any data off the hard drive?
     
  3. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Sounds like either a failing hard drive, or a RAM problem, or a low-level kernel problem in Windows. First- find out the manufacturer of your hard drive then visit their web site and download and run their diagnostic (most of these are available on the UBCD), use the extended or advanced tests. If the HD passes, run an extended /advanced diagnostic on the system RAM (again, many good tests are available on the UBCD). If everything passes, and you need to save data, download and burn a bootable Linux CD (since the UBCD4Win is not working). You can download Knoppix (a bootable CD based Linux distro) from one of the links listed here. Both CD and DVD versions are available. Obviously, the DVD will have more features but will take 3-5 times longer to download. You'll need a USB flash drive or external drive to store your data, so be sure any USB devices are plugged in BEFORE booting to your Knoppix disk.

    Good luck - I hope this helps! ;)
     
  4. jephph

    jephph Private E-2

    Thank you. It's looking like it's a bad HD. I think I'll just pull it out and put it in a docking station and transfer the files that way. Thanks for the help.
     
  5. jephph

    jephph Private E-2

    So... I ran SeaTools on the drive. The scan found errors and was able to fix some of them but not all. After that, when trying to boot up the computer normally, it automatically ran chkdsk, and fix more errors, and after another reboot, it's now loading into Windows. Issue resolved. Thank you.
     
  6. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

    Don't trust a hard drive with errors. Back it up now while it is working.
    You might need to replace it, in which case this hd can be used to store non-critical data.
     

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