Hello forum,

I am trying to diagnos and fix this problem with my laptop and not have to spend obscene amounts of money or get stuck on the phone for hours.

I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop, Window XP, that I have been using for about 2 years now. Everything OK, until yesterday.



I boot the computer up, works ok for about 2 minutes, and instantly freezes. I have mouse movement, no keyboard, and have to hard shutdown every time cause everything is inactive. Started with firefox, i couldnt load a page. Now i try to load something else like iTunes, or AVG anti virus, it loads fine, then freezes.

Which direction should I go to fix this? I dont really know where to start. I trying booting in Safe Mode, and it did the same thing. (If i did safe mode correctly)

Thank you in advance for the help. I would really like to see this fixed.I was wondering about the safe mode thing... if you have your Xp CD's you might try booting from them, and using the "repair" option. that should fix it if it is a driver issue, or a corrupt windows problem... it is worth a try..What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?Nothing is new, that is what is weird. I was browsing the internet and it froze, and now this is the problem.1) Boot to the recovery console and run chkdsk /r

2) To check the ram, download memtest (http://www.memtest.org/). Burn it to a cd using a dedicated .iso burning utility (http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm), make sure the cd drive is at the top of the boot order in bios, then boot to the newly created cd and run the utility.
What is the recovery console? Sorry for the dumb questions...Not dumb at all. Boot to the XP CD and CHOOSE the first repair option. That will take you to the recovery console. If you don't have an XP cd, please do the following instead:

Right-click on a command prompt icon and open as administrator. In the command prompt window type:chkdsk /r  (then press ENTER). You'll be told the disk is in use and asked if you want to run checkdisk on the next boot. Say yes, exit the command prompt window, and reboot.
did the chkdsk /r

It said windows replaced bad clusters in

/WINDOWS/pchealth/helpctr/datacoll/CO2E7F~1.XML

and in

/DOCUME~1/ALLUSE~1/APPLIC~1/AVG10/log/AVGRSL~1.2

And now it seems to be stuck at 42% under verifying data after these last to actionsLet it run to completion...Its stuck at 42. Been like this for over 1.5 hrs... What should I do?Apparently the hd has some bad sectors and checkdisk moved data out of those sectors. You are probably going to have to replace the hd.

Leave checkdisk alone for a while longer. If after another hour or so it's still stuck at 42% you'll have to force a reboot - but that's generally not a good thing to do from checkdisk. Run the appropriate manufacturer's diagnostic:  http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287
If you're lucky, it will mark the bad sectors and reassign new ones from the few spares available.Well its still stuck. About 2+ hours. Can i do this check disk again? What is it actually doing? and hd you mean hard drive.....? Thats not a good thing. Will I lose all my files? How much is this going to cost? And what is a sector?Hold power button down until it turns off.  If you can start it up again, copy your important data off on to flash drive or WHATEVER backup you have or you may lose everything.  New hard drives are about $50, but you haven't lost this one yet.  Dell has diagnostics at the bootup, F12 at the Dell logo.

Dell Inspiron, probably a Western Digital (WD) or Seagate hard disk drive (HD).  Download the Seagate Seatools for DOS (ISO CDROM image).  Create the bootable CD on your good computer & boot to the CD on the Inspiron.  Run the short & long DFT. Quote from: Computer_Commando on March 26, 2011, 05:30:55 PM

Hold power button down until it turns off.  If you can start it up again, copy your important data off on to flash drive or whatever backup you have or you may lose everything.  New hard drives are about $50, but you haven't lost this one yet.  Dell has diagnostics at the bootup, F12 at the Dell logo.

Dell Inspiron, probably a Western Digital (WD) or Seagate hard disk drive (HD).  Download the Seagate Seatools for DOS (ISO CDROM image).  Create the bootable CD on your good computer & boot to the CD on the Inspiron.  Run the short & long DFT.