Locks, crashes and failures to load windows

Hey everybody,

I've had an ongoing issue with my laptop the last weeks and I've tried to battle it out but now I need some supreme insight. The supreme insight might be "hardware issue dude, turn it in" but at least then I have confirmation.

A few weeks ago I was running a windows and a linux partition side by side when Windows suddenly crashed, giving me a blue screen and dumping physical memory on me. For a good time I was unable to get into the windows partition but the Linux partition was working OK. Every now and then after a few system repairs and stuff it would start working again and I could get into Windows.

When I found my Windows 7 CD I simply decided to say to hell with it and I cleaned out the disk completely, reinstalling Windows 7 from scratch. That has actually had it working decently and I haven't seen too many issues. It's still been really slow loading at times or experiencing signifcant freezes and program lock ups. Still as I said, on a good day it's been nothing but an application locking up and nothing more.

Last night I was playing on it all night, some freeze-lags but no crashes. I booted it down when I went to bed and now it won't simply boot back up. It tries to load Windows but fails and sends me into repair mode where it basicly gives me a blank black screen and just continues working. If I leave it for a ton of time it will eventually show the repair tool background but nothing more. That's where I'm stuck at this point.

So quick recap. Problems booting and getting into windows in general, application lock ups and freezes when I'm in Windows mixed with working OK every now and then to the point that I can run games and anything else.

I'm sure this could be one of the holy triad when it comes to issues. Memory, gfx or harddrive. Though I would appreciate any insight into the problem or things I can try. I've tried the memory testing a few times, comes up with nothing, says everything is fine.

Thanks,

Verre

 

UPDATE: I got it working after a system repair that took about 2 hours and was unable to find a problem. It worked fine through out the day, now in the evening it shut down again. The whole thing froze, before it went down completely I noticed that somehow my Avast antivirus had been turned off and that my wireless internet wasnt offline. Which instead seems like a virus, the thing is that I reformated the whole thing just a week and a half ago so how could the same thing have happened?

Anyone got any clues?

 

First, try a full scan using Malware Bytes:

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=5756

If nothing comes up, my thought (given you did a complete reformat a week ago) would be to buy and install a new hard drive and reload Windows on it. I had a similar issue on my notebook PC about a year ago with random freeze-ups and Blue Screens of Death. My experience is that chkdsk and "quick" drive tests often miss issues. If you decide to run a "long" drive test using a utility such as SeaTools or Data Lifeguard on the existing disk, back up all data first. If a hard drive is on its last legs, a "long" test has the potential to finish it off completely.

Even if a drive test says it's repaired any errors, I still prefer to err on the side of caution and replace the drive - once a drive starts acting up, it will go downhill quickly. Given notebook drives are relatively cheap, replacing it will likely save you time and reduce the possibility of the problems reoccurring.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the reply,

so youre figuring its the hard drive? Yeah, this is a notebook as well which is why I havent tried exluding things by removing hardware. Not very hot with notebooks, I do fine with stationary but..

Another update is that its working again, fairly well as well. What did I do? Well when I finally got into windows I uninstalled my Avast Antivirus among a few other minimal programs, then I ran CCleaner and a Defraggler and after that its been working close to fine again. No freezes, no 25 min loading times for Windows.. Its all really ****ing weird if you ask me.

 

Just shooting another thank you to Gman863 and confirming that it seems to have been the hard drive that was crawling on it's knees the last few yards towards goal.

Bought a 250 WD disk for 49 dollars today just to troubleshoot and so far it seems to be working like it should be. Installed windows 7 and a few other programs along with a few games and not even a hick up.

Thanks again!