Hard drive...or RAM? Help! (BSOD)

[satindemon4u]

Boy this laptop is really giving me a head ache. I am fixing it for someone. So far I have reinstalled windows because well..it had to be done.

Well after installing windows all was good for about 20 minutes. Then I noticed that it became to run EXTREMELY slow. Well I shut it down and went to bed because it was late. Started it up today and it was running smooth for about 5 minutes. After that it started going VERY slow again. After it froze up it decided to go to the wonderful, BSOD. After booting back up it is going VERY slow. It takes about 5 minutes just to display the windows loading logo and that's as far as I get. So far I have pulled 1 of two of the memory sticks. Currently I am looking at the black screen with a gray bar that states "Windows is loading files...". In the ten minutes this has been up it has moved two blocks (Roughly 5%).

So, should I pull the memory stick that is in there now and try using the other one? Also try using different slots?

Oh and after waiting on that I got a new screen stating "Windows encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer...blah blah blah.... Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred."

IDEAS?

Finding online that it could be the hard drive. Which would explain the EXTREME slowness. Think that's it guys?

 

[micropage7]

usually its from ram
check your ram first
btw check the hdd too, since its slow could from bad sector or corrupted data.
does the hdd start to clicking or spinning unstable unusual

 

[satindemon4u]

usually its from ram
check your ram first
btw check the hdd too, since its slow could from bad sector or corrupted data.
does the hdd start to clicking or spinning unstable unusual

Checked the RAM. Tried both sticks in both slots and no luck there. Pulled the hard drive out and did find this on the surface. Could this be the issue?... I can actually feel the scratch. It's not just visible.

 

[micropage7]

have you tried to turn it on with one ram, just to check
how come your hdd board has scratch, from falling?
could be damage board makes it fail

 

[Pill Monster]

hat s

Oh and after waiting on that I got a new screen stating "Windows encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer...blah blah blah.... Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred."

IDEAS?

Finding online that it could be the hard drive. Which would explain the EXTREME slowness. Think that's it guys?

That specific stop code indicates a faulty HDD.

Btw....RAM is not an I/O device.

 

[satindemon4u]

have you tried to turn it on with one ram, just to check
how come your hdd board has scratch, from falling?
could be damage board makes it fail

Tried that with the RAM as well and with no luck. I have no idea what the scratch is from. Like I said I am fixing this for someone. So whatever happened it happened when they had it.

 

[satindemon4u]

hat s

That specific stop code indicates a faulty HDD.

Btw....RAM is not an I/O device.

That's what I had figured.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Try booting USB linux and do something for a while... else casulal memtest route for few hours etc...

 

[satindemon4u]

I am thinking that it is the hard drive. Based on the awful speed and the scratch that is deep enough to easily feel haha. Contacted the owner and actually they were just glad that they didn't have to buy a new machine haha. So not all bad I suppose

 

[Blue-Knight]

The best way to test is to try with an other hard drive. In this case, it is the suspect #1.

 

[satindemon4u]

The best way to test is to try with an other hard drive. In this case, it is the suspect #1.

Well I tried with an older drive the only problem there was that my "older" drive has windows 8 on it. Her computer has 7 on it and is an older one. So when trying to boot it I just got that there was nothing to boot and to insert media haha

 

[Blue-Knight]

You can try to re-install Windows on that HDD, if possible.

 

[satindemon4u]

Tried with no go

 

[Paladone]

Boy this laptop is really giving me a head ache. I am fixing it for someone. So far I have reinstalled windows because well..it had to be done.

Well after installing windows all was good for about 20 minutes. Then I noticed that it became to run EXTREMELY slow. Well I shut it down and went to bed because it was late. Started it up today and it was running smooth for about 5 minutes. After that it started going VERY slow again. After it froze up it decided to go to the wonderful, BSOD. After booting back up it is going VERY slow. It takes about 5 minutes just to display the windows loading logo and that's as far as I get. So far I have pulled 1 of two of the memory sticks. Currently I am looking at the black screen with a gray bar that states "Windows is loading files...". In the ten minutes this has been up it has moved two blocks (Roughly 5%).

So, should I pull the memory stick that is in there now and try using the other one? Also try using different slots?

Oh and after waiting on that I got a new screen stating "Windows encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer...blah blah blah.... Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred."

IDEAS?

Finding online that it could be the hard drive. Which would explain the EXTREME slowness. Think that's it guys?

I was having a similar issue with my laptop and it turned out that the CPU needed a fresh coat of thermal paste as it was overheating; just a suggestion.

 

[satindemon4u]

I was having a similar issue with my laptop and it turned out that the CPU needed a fresh coat of thermal paste as it was overheating; just a suggestion.

Good suggestion. Will keep that in mind as well. Still wondering if it is the hard drive though because when trying to do a new install of windows again, for whatever reason an error came up stating it couldn't write a certain part of it. :O

 

[Blue-Knight]

for whatever reason an error came up stating it couldn't write a certain part of it.

Definitely HDD failure in this case.

I can be wrong! Try the same with another HDD.

 

[satindemon4u]

Been there done that. As stated above i don't have an empty one. So the one I tried has windows 8 on it but with it being an older laptop it couldn't recognize the OS haha

 

[chomper]

did you reinstall the OS from a recovery partition or outside the partition from another storage device ? A lot of the times the recovery partitions can be messed up or even they can get infected over time.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Use HD Tune to check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. S.M.A.R.T. has yet to lie to me. If S.M.A.R.T. comes back okay, run memtestx86+ overnight and see if it gets any errors. If memtestx86+ doesn't catch any errors, I blame your motherboard.

 

[satindemon4u]

Use HD Tune to check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. S.M.A.R.T. has yet to lie to me. If S.M.A.R.T. comes back okay, run memtestx86+ overnight and see if it gets any errors. If memtestx86+ doesn't catch any errors, I blame your motherboard.

Ahhhhh good idea! I knew there was a test I could run, in this case HD Tune. Will give it a run and see what happens

Doing a memtest now. I think it may be the Hard drive though. Was just now trying to do a new install of windows and I could click continue on the installation and then what would be the disk manager window didn't appear. Waited about 15 minutes before giving up and well, now running the memtest lol

 

[larrymoencurly]

That scratch on the hard disk circuit board is harmless because it's just a lighter shade of blue, meaning it didn't even go completely through that blue layer. The time to worry is when the scratch is copper colored, indicating the scratch got all the way through to the circuit traces (but that still won't necessarily mean there's damage).

That red & black plaid cloth is anti-static, right? Static can do nasty things to electronics, especially in the winter.

How dirty is the CPU heatsink? Laptops use heatsinks with closely spaced fins that clog up easily with dust, and vacuuming them out (hold the fan still while doing that) or blowing them out can help a lot, but any DVD drive can get dirty if air is blown into the laptop.

Try to diagnose suspected hardware problems without Windows, by using DOS
programs, such as those found on The Ultimate Boot CD (can be installed on a USB flash drive). One of of its programs is MHDD, which is different from other HDD tests because it not only indicates sectors that are 100% bad but also those that are damaged partially and are hard to read because the HDD was moved around while the computer was running. This CD also has MemTest86 or MemTest86+ for testing RAM, but very likely the RAM is OK if it was made from branded chips. Chip brands include Samsung (SEC), Micron/Crucial ("M" with an ellipse orbiting it), Elpida, Hynix, ProMOS ( PSC, funny vortex with 2 rows of 3 dots), Power Chip, Nanya/Inotera, Winbond, and Infineon/Qimonda but not Kingston, Corsair, G.Skill, Mushkin, or Patriot.

 

[satindemon4u]

Already determined that it was the hard drive