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ledzilla
09-07-2009, 12:11 PM
Ok, so I've been commissioned to fix a malfunctioning laptop by a friend who made a trade for it off of a friend of his. It kept having problems with crashing and it had some malware on it. So, it seemed the best course of action was to wipe the drives and do a clean install. Ran the restoration partition... It would do the install, and then in the final steps after a reboot the system would crash. Tried it several times, same thing every time. Re-wiped the drives, and tried to do a fresh install of Vista x64. Installer crashed before 10%. Tried a Vista x86 install... Crashed at 26%. Cleaned the drives and tried an XP Pro install... Crashed when it was almost finished. I've never seen such failure to install Windows in my life, especially XP. There was only one PC I ever worked on that wouldn't take XP and I think the hardware was just too old. What gets me is that this laptop CAME WITH Vista, so I'm at a loss. I've never worked on a computer that would consistently crash while trying to install an operating system... Guess my next shot is to try Linux. I have an Ubuntu installer around here somewhere.
Spectragod
09-07-2009, 03:38 PM
Bad sector(s) on the drive?
babbage
09-07-2009, 04:42 PM
Probably bad RAM chips. Look it up on Kingston.com and get some new chips. May as well max it out, RAM is pretty cheap now.
ledzilla
09-07-2009, 05:22 PM
Yeah, I was thinking it could be the RAM as well. On one of the partial successes, an error popped up during installation about a failure to "Read" from a memory location. Looks like I may have to increase the charge on the bill. But memory is definitely cheaper than a new hard drive, especially when you factor in the time spent on reformatting and partitioning.
ledzilla
09-07-2009, 05:23 PM
Bad sector(s) on the drive?

I don't think it's the HDD. Between the drive erasure utility and a few other odds and ends a bad sector would have shown up. But I won't rule it out.
bob6364
09-07-2009, 05:29 PM
could be some swapped in some non comp. ram also.....
ledzilla
09-07-2009, 05:37 PM
By the looks, the RAM doesn't appear to have been physically touched by a human since the day it was built, but I was informed that it had been handled by "computer repair personnel". Time to do some price checking. And I was already thinking of buying Kingston. I have 2GB of Hyper X DDR333 in my XP desktop, and have been using it in every PC I've built or upgraded. Been very happy with their quality.
bob6364
09-07-2009, 05:45 PM
kingston,corsair,mushkin...its all good,just laptops seem to be just a tad fussier then desktops.
also you may try elevating the front of the laptop about 2 inches off the table when installing...it may just be overheating when your doing the install.Some laptops get heat tempermental with age.I know the one i'm using right now is,best cooler money can buy and she still overheats,been taken apart and cleaned several times also.
BruteForce
09-07-2009, 06:08 PM
PM me with the type you need. I have several DIMMs laying around here.
kmastl
09-07-2009, 07:17 PM
have you ever tried using this http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ It can test just about any part of your system and its free.
bob6364
09-07-2009, 07:28 PM
oh boy haven't seen stuff like that since I was on EfNet....long live IRC!
babbage
09-08-2009, 10:12 AM
oh boy haven't seen stuff like that since I was on EfNet....long live IRC!

IRC - Bah - FidoNet was better. :)
illwood
09-08-2009, 05:24 PM
I also feel like it's bad RAM.

Have you tried Memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/)?

Don't worry, it's free to download, you are only charged if you want them to make you a CD.
ledzilla
09-09-2009, 05:00 PM
I used the memory tests on that Ultimate Boot CD... Both modules failed every test thrown at them. No wonder everything kept screwing up.
JamesHecker
09-09-2009, 09:25 PM
I can't imagine that it is worth it to pay someone to do all you are doing to get that thing to run. As cheap as machines are nowdays, wouldn't be more economical to get a new one?
ledzilla
09-09-2009, 10:41 PM
I can't imagine that it is worth it to pay someone to do all you are doing to get that thing to run. As cheap as machines are nowdays, wouldn't be more economical to get a new one?

Actually, I'm only charging my friend $50 for the repair plus parts. All it needed was new RAM (so far as I can tell) and a full system restore. And that's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new machine, even a Linux powered netbook. A repair shop was going to charge $250. Now you can definitely buy a machine for THAT amount of cash.