Laptop Troubleshooting

[Pandarye]

Good Morning

I hope one of the many forum members with more experience than I have can help me.

I'm trying to revive a relatively old Samsung laptop that has been sitting in a cupboard for the last two years. What I need help with is how to figure out what exactly is causing the issue I'm about to describe.

When I started working on it the owner informed me that it would frequently crash and refuse to boot up. She also stated that she had someone who "works in IT" take a look at it and he returned the laptop with the HDD removed stating that the laptop is "broken" and there was nothing he could do.

I always stubbornly refuse to accept that anything is broken beyond repair so I inserted the HDD and the laptop booted into windows 7 just fine. However I noted that after an hour or so of use it would freeze and then refuse to boot. If I then left the laptop switched off for a few hours it would boot just fine again.

The problem prevented me from installing any updates as it would freeze midway through downloading and/or installing.

Thinking that there may have been a problem with the OS and not having the OEM recovery disc I then decided to try a clean install of Windows 10. On my first attempt the laptop unexpectedly rebooted in the middle of the process and then refused to boot from the hdd or cd drive.

I then left the laptop off for a while and tried again. This time the installation process worked and I booted successfully into windows 10. However, while downloading drivers and updates it again froze, gave me a "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" error screen and then once again refused to boot up.

My assumption now is that there is a problem with the HDD. I would like to know if this is the most likely problem or if there may be some other hardware issue that I may be able to diagnose before I spend the money replacing the HDD.

 

[Privateuser456]

Good Morning

I hope one of the many forum members with more experience than I have can help me.

I'm trying to revive a relatively old Samsung laptop that has been sitting in a cupboard for the last two years. What I need help with is how to figure out what exactly is causing the issue I'm about to describe.

When I started working on it the owner informed me that it would frequently crash and refuse to boot up. She also stated that she had someone who "works in IT" take a look at it and he returned the laptop with the HDD removed stating that the laptop is "broken" and there was nothing he could do.

I always stubbornly refuse to accept that anything is broken beyond repair so I inserted the HDD and the laptop booted into windows 7 just fine. However I noted that after an hour or so of use it would freeze and then refuse to boot. If I then left the laptop switched off for a few hours it would boot just fine again.

The problem prevented me from installing any updates as it would freeze midway through downloading and/or installing.

Thinking that there may have been a problem with the OS and not having the OEM recovery disc I then decided to try a clean install of Windows 10. On my first attempt the laptop unexpectedly rebooted in the middle of the process and then refused to boot from the hdd or cd drive.

I then left the laptop off for a while and tried again. This time the installation process worked and I booted successfully into windows 10. However, while downloading drivers and updates it again froze, gave me a "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" error screen and then once again refused to boot up.

My assumption now is that there is a problem with the HDD. I would like to know if this is the most likely problem or if there may be some other hardware issue that I may be able to diagnose before I spend the money replacing the HDD.

It could be a HDD issue or a temperature issue try downloading Speccy it will tell you the temperature of everything. I'm no expert but I had a simmilar issue with my PC and in the end we found out the CPU cooler was lose and the system will switch off to prevent the CPU from overheating.

 

[DanDango]

I the pass I had memory that booted fine but under load the pc freeze, best to swap memory and check results. One memory chip on the module was not working, the rest was fine. Cleaning the intake heat fins and the fan help if overheating.

 

[sajunky]

It could be hard drive, but I would start from booting from external media and run memtest for couple hours. If test fail, then hard drive is not a problem.

 

[WAslayer]

take the hard drive, plug into another pc and install hard disk sentinel and check the smart status on the drive.. this will let you know the state drive is in, but random freezing will not be the hard drive.. boot memtest off a flashdrive and let it run as was suggested.. run it with a single dimm at a time.. any errors picked up, replace it and that will probably be the issue.. clean out the fan heatsink of any dust to be on the safe of thermal protection..

 

[i.got~issues]

Could indeed be thermal issues, memory or failing HDD.

1st thing to do would be possibly to boot off a "Live CD" or Bootable OS USB and run this to see if the same symptoms manifest themselves.

If so, then test the Memory and CPU thermal temps...

 

[Pandarye]

Thanks guys. Will give these suggestions a try when I get a chance.

 

[RoganDawes]

Agreed on the thermal suggestions. Get some compressed air and blow out the fan holes, and see what happens. Do it outside, though, and don't take a breath while you press the button!