# My computer is working!?!



## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

This makes no sense to me.

My laptop is 10 years old, I suspect the hard drive is...shot.
For the past 2 months I've had to run check disk and found errors, about 2 times a week on average.

This morning it goes to the blue screen of death saying the disk is unmountable or some such thing, repeatedly.

In a last chance I install XP on it over its current one (xp) just for the heck of it. Now it's running again. I rebooted 3 times, it is just fine. 

Why isn't my computer broke? I was convinced the hard drive was bad, now, that I installed XP again, it is fine, that doesn't make sense to me. A bad hard drive shouldn't have allowed me to install xp from cd. So is it possible that the last installation of xp was just corrupt? (6 months ago) Or maybe the next time I reboot it will blue screen on me again? I just want to understand it better.

Any suggestions for a nice new laptop with Windows 7 upgrade to 8, not necessarily the newest processor, 15 inches to 17 inch screen?


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

You just got a temporary reprieve, and your hard drive is failing.

Think of a hard drive as an old LP record. Think of the read-write part of the actuator arm as the tiny stylus of the tone arm on a record player.

Remember how some record players could drop the stylus accurately on track 2 or any other track on the record? The actuator arm is like one of those tone arms on steroids and can accurately drop (hover, actually) the "stylus" on an _exact_ spot smaller than the point of a sewing needle.
As a hard drive fails, the drop zone drifts. Instead of reading a spot that contains a command needed by the operating system or a program, it might be reading the text file of an email a track or two over. If it was consistent, it would be fine. Instead, it might do that a hundred times and then drift again to another spot. Once the problem starts, it gets worse - usually over the period of a month or two.

I ran into that problem regularly with a program I wrote. Because of the design of the program, 99% of the time it was one file that would get corrupted. I wrote an error handler to fix the immediate problem on the fly, and notify the user of impending hard drive failure. By far, the bulk of the problems were in the early 2000s on Seagate drives. Swapping them out fixed it 100% of the time.

What appears to have happened for you is the re-write to the disk of the operating system is TEMPORARILY being read correctly.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

Harry, thank you, I'm with you on this, it makes sense. I have been listening for scraping noises from the hard drive but so far so good. The scraping noise has always alerted me to the hard drive failures.
All I hear from this laptop is the fan running on occasion, it doesn't particularly like facebook and the fan goes on everytime. I suppose it is alerting me to all the hot air going on in facebook.

I do remember learning about the platter and the arm in a hard drive. Meh. I am fully prepared for the death and funeral of this laptop. I tend to squeeze a quarter until the eagle screams and computers until they go into comas.

I suppose I'll be looking for a way to dispose of this and other computers around here each in partial disrepair.

Well, that puts me in 'Temporary Heck'. For the time being, I'm looking at a new laptop. This was a Dell, what are the 'good laptops'? HP, toshiba, samsung, asus, lenovo, ....Apple (NO Don't!).

I'm thinking HP.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

I'm thinking Toshiba and levono, but that opinion is only founded in hearsay.

When the fan runs a lot, there is generally some ongoing processing or bad code running using up CPU cycles - although I do like that "hot air" on facebook idea.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Feather In The Breeze said:


> I suppose I'll be looking for a way to dispose of this and other computers around here each in partial disrepair.


I suspect that Windows 7 is not an option for a 10 year-old computer. A lot of perfectly good XP compatible machines will become obsolete come April, when update support for XP will end. The problem is that a lot of machines of your vintage don't have Windows 7 drivers available. Unload it if you can.

Look at eBay for used dual core processor laptops with Windows 7. Here's a filtered search for between $100 and $150, with only Windows 7, only dual core Intel processors greater than 2 GHz, 2 GB or more memory, buy it now, USA vendors only, and sorted in order of price (lowest first).

http://www.ebay.com/sch/PC-Laptops-...o=100&_udhi=150&LH_BIN=1&LH_PrefLoc=1&_sop=15

You should be able to find a bunch in that price range.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

Yes, well, thanks for your thoughts men. I haven't been PUSHED to go buy anything as of yet. Should this old dog die tomorrow, or soon enough, I'll announce the funeral. In the meantime, I'm on a wing and a prayer.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

It died this morning. Funeral at noon on Saturday.

new computer ordered and will be here tomorrow or the next. *sigh* I'm gonna miss that old dog.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

I did end up buying a new laptop 2 days ago, it arrived yesterday. During the time (26 hours) I waited for the new one, (yes can you believe it only took 26 hours, no?, me either) we (son and I) found another old laptop here, took out its hard drive and replaced the dead one in the dell. So the funeral was cancelled and xp installed.

I fully expect to re-announce the funeral for the computer in a few years.

If anyone wants parts of a dell laptop inspiron 5100, (no hard drive) for the cost of shipping, just PM me.


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## jefferson (Nov 11, 2004)

What ever you do don't "mount" that old drive. This here is a family board.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

funny.

I ended up with Win 7/with disks for Win 8. HP ProBook 4540s, dual core i5 processor, it is heavy and big, which is okay because I most likely won't travel with it. The screen is wide, nice. The keyboard has a number pad on the right side which is good for household finances. Easy to use, no problems. $679 less $50 rebate.

http://www.pcm.com/p/HP-Notebook-Computers/product~dpno~9601544~pdp.icbibhd?src=search

I have a great saleman there if anyone needs one, to walk you through choosing and shipping it fast fast fast. PM me if you need someone like that. 

Some of my old beloved website design software was incompatible, though it was very old stuff.

Thanks for everyone's help.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Feather In The Breeze said:


> I ended up with Win 7/with disks for Win 8. HP ProBook 4540s, dual core i5 processor, it is heavy and big, which is okay because I most likely won't travel with it. The screen is wide, nice. The keyboard has a number pad on the right side which is good for household finances. Easy to use, no problems. $679 less $50 rebate.


You got yourself a terrific laptop that you will undoubtedly get many years of reliable service from. I think you bought a lot more computer than you really need, but you've got a machine that will remain contemporary for a long time to come.


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## unregistered5595 (Mar 3, 2003)

Nevada said:


> You got yourself a terrific laptop that you will undoubtedly get many years of reliable service from. I think you bought a lot more computer than you really need, *but you've got a machine that will remain contemporary for a long time to come*.


Thanks Nevada, yes. That is so true, and that was part of what I needed to do, get something new for once to last a while. 

The XP thing, updates going out in April next year was not looking good to me. I gave my old one to my son for his help, it was fun working on things together. He plays games.

A nice person on HT that I do some work for sent me a check and that helped with the costs. The kindness of long distance friends amazes me. 
I feel very good about this computer, now I just have to name him/or her. I'm not sure yet. HP, Henry Peabody or Harriet Peabody?


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