General Chat / my laptop is an enormous pile of shit

Just wondering if a more tech savvy person here might be able to shed some light on some current issues I'm having. I move out in a couple months and I'm really wanting to figure out if I need a new laptop (money is tight obviously) or if I can somehow limp along with my current one if there is some sort of workaround


below will be a detailed explanation of my year long struggle with this laptop but the tl;dr of it is right now it's getting to the point where I get a BSOD on an moderate sized download and even if I remove more than what I'm trying to download I'll still hit BSODs. I am nowhere near full on the hd. Bottom line is 90% of the time I try to download/install something on my computer I get BSOD.



Now the extensive explanation of this goes back to almost a year ago when I had my first big trouble with this computer. It was about a year old at the time and I got a windows stop error that completely locked me out of booting. I tried everything I could (including a topic here if I remember right) but eventually had a friend back up what he could off the hd and wipe it. Vista was completely fucked so he put XP on as the fresh OS and everything went pretty smooth. A couple months go by and I steadily get things back on track and running normally. At about the time I hit about 75gigs full on the hd I hit another slew of BSOD crashes (all similar windows stop errors to my original error) in the middle of installing/downloading something but this time I could always reboot and recover and even download what I want as long as I free up the necessary amount of space. Essentially my new hd cap was around 75 gigs which wasn't too terrible and didn't cut into my life too much. I tried a few little fixes and stuff to try and work out what was wrong but nothing really helped the situation... I did discover I couldn't defragment my hd though which was very troubling.

I was able to limp along like this for a while though and eventually grew used to the limited amount of space I could use on my hd. It never really plagued me much until recently when the stop error seem to be getting more volatile and creep up almost every time I download something over a couple hundred megs. I've recently removed a lot off of my computer and am down to like 35 gigs on the hd, way below the usual time problems appear.


I've always been pretty stumped and have asked quite a few people who didn't have an answer either. When I got the original problem fixed the guy said it was probably a virus corrupting the boot.ini with OS or something.... a pretty safe answer. I'm convinced over the past year I've been dealing with the same problem though and am sure it is a hardware issue as it has persisted through a fucking hd wipe and complete OS change. I've looked up the stop error and it comes up for tons of different reasons... from new motherboards not working to viruses to loose RAM blah blah blah. Checked my hardware and have no loose parts, virus scans come up clean and I'm always very careful with what I do. I've also done numerous /chkdsk scans and whatnot and even though they say a lot gets done and such and such bad sectors have been partitioned off, it has never really helped the problem

The computer is a 2 year old Acer Aspire laptop and I'm pretty convinced I got fucking lemon hd.... if anyone has any light to shed on this I would be very grateful. What pisses me off the most is I'm sure there is plenty of viable space on the hd but it's all fragmented and fucked up with bad sectors and keeps wanting to write to those. I'm just wondering if there isn't some workaround.

thanks for reading

constant BSODs -> new computer.

Don't let it get to the same point as my old laptop. It kinda blew up and smoked out my whole living room.

Acer Aspire? Is it one of those cheap Aspire One netbooks? I have had an Aspire One for half a year (got it for Christmas) and it has had TWO fits of black screens of death before booting. Constant BSOD? Maybe one of your critical system files (besides boot.ini, we've mentioned that) is missing. I got a BSOD on my desktop once, we had to replace the HDD. Would that be possible on a laptop? If the other hardware failed, purchase a new computer.

Edited by GigaG, 31 May 2010 - 03:09 PM.

Short 'n sweet: Your hard drive is fucked. Bad sectors are like scratches on a CD, they make the entire thing worthless. (And the more it tries to access them, the more damage is done.

Replacing hardware in a laptop is more trouble than it's worth. Save up and buy a decent machine. (If you can afford it, get a ruggedized laptop. You can basically toss one off a mountain and it'll boot when it lands.)

-ACE

get a biggest cup of coffee you can find then file an insurance claim?

Replacing hardware in a laptop is more trouble than it's worth. Save up and buy a decent machine.  

That is pure bullshit and you know it. One thing that is very easy to replace in a laptop it is the HDD. Most of the time you can unscrew a plastic piece at the under side of the laptop, then you get to the HDD and you have to unscrew 2 screws (most of the time) then you can lift it off, out of the Sata connection. 


Milo, how much space do you need for your files? If I look here for example, I see that buying a new HDD isn't that pricy. (These are Dutch prices with euro's, but most hardware is equally priced around the world). They you just put the new HDD in, boot the laptop with the Windows Installation CD in the CD drive and install a new fresh copy of Windows on the new HDD.This would be the cheapest solution to have a good functioning laptop again. 

Another solution is buying an SSD (Solid State Disk, these are expensive / have a low capacity). An SSD is basically the same as an HDD. You can store things on it, however an SSD is kinda like an USB stick, it uses Flash memory and that is very expensive. But it is very fast and booting Windows goes much quicker then with a normal HDD + All programs are launched faster. However I would not recommand if you are not a dedicated pc user ... I do have one for example and booting Windows from a cold start takes about 15 sec. Add 10 of the Bios and I have a complete laptop running in less then 30 seconds. With an SSD you do not have any of the mechanical problems that a HDD has so ... 

@ RRP, that is actually a good solution, almost as good as your 'put it on a fire, to get rid of moisture'.

k thanks guys, that's about what I figured...

BTW great metaphor.

The tech support catchall these days seems to be booting linux from a flash drive and basically interrogating your hardware, but I kind of doubt you're up for that.

Check warranty stuff before you do anything, of course.

Laptops are not hard to repair. If you have a screwdriver and can find a hard drive for the right price I'd try it. All of the components fit together perfectly if you bought the right parts, and all you should have to do is not lose any screws.

I agree with Ace, get a new computer.