Possible Damage?

I have an HP Pavilion 734n, and its been having some problems lately. Though, at some point, it appeared to crash. However, it was only repeated freezes, not a blue screen or anything. So I would turn it off, and, occaisinally, it wouldn't start again after. A while ago, I pulled the plug, and began to look for something new, after the freezes would happen in (about) 20 minute intervals.

However, Recently, a friend of mine persuaded me to try to boot it up again. It worked all day, and I took care to shut it down at night. I did this before, and I always have, and it worked for a week before the freezes started again. After the first, I hadn't turned it on since.

I was wondering... it is and old computer... do you think it's dying? If not... do you have any suggestions as to what could be the problem? And could these freezes be causing permanent damage? I'm currently using whatever computer's convenient... school, library, friends' computers, whatever.

 

Ya, that's getting on in years but should still work. Two guesses from me, the first is the power supply and the second is heat. I really hate manufacturers that state the following:

Thanks a lot for nothing you blithering idiots!:mad

Run OCCT and paste the front page to this thread after some 10 minutes. Beware, since your hardware seems to be shaky already, do this at your own risk as OCCT will stress your machine to the fullest. Maybe someone else has a gentler way to rule out bad hardware.

 

Thanks, I'll be sure to check it out, though, I will take your advice and see if there are any other alternatives.

 

Power supply might explain why it doesn't restart after shutting down. When that happens does it do absolutely nothing or do fans run or lights turn on?

On the freezes my first guess might be something hard drive related. Could be a bad cable, bad controller or bad drive. I'm not really sure since you seem to be saying it locks up and then resumes a little later. Since you have an 80gb drive it is probably at least 5 years old which is about the limit for reliability in terms of running an OS.

You could run chkdsk to see if there are any errors in the filesystem. My Computer>Right click C: drive and select Properties. Then on Tools tab select Error Checking and then in the window just leave the first box checked and hit OK or Check Now. It will ask to schedule for next reboot so so OK. When you reboot and chkdsk runs, note if it finds any errors.

You could also run a manufacturer's HD diagnostic to check the health of the HD. In my Computer>Right-click C: and select Properties>on the Hardware tab it will give the manufacturer of your HD (Probably Seagate/Maxtor or WDC for Western Digital).

You can get either SeaTools for Seagate/Maxtor drive or Western Digital's Data Lifeguard diagnostic, the Windows version of the programs should be fine to check the drive to rule out mechanical problems. But you should run both the Short and Extended test to thoroughly check the drive.

 

OK, the weeks I left it alone haven't been kind to my computer. It won't last long enough for me to open mozilla firefox, let alone run a hardare scan. Any other suggestions? Perhaps it's dead?

Smething else, whenever it freezes, there's a buzzing sound that comes over the speakers.... I don't know if that could help, but it just occured to me now that that could be useful in some way....