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Constant Hangups on Laptop

S

shaun11

Junior Member
I'm think I may have a hard drive issue with my laptop, but it could be something more.

Laptop: Acer 5534
OS: Windows 7
IGP: Ati Radeon 3200
Ram: 4gig

Basically here are the symptoms:

-The computer about every 15-30 minutes will hang up for about 5-10 minutes.
-This happens mostly when I'm browsing the web or watching a flash video.
-A lot of times when it happens google chrome displays "waiting for cache" in the progress bar.
-It happens with other browsers also, Firefox and IE.
-It locks up during usb transfers from HDD to USB but not when going the other way. Stopping transfers completely until it fights it way through then continues them.
-It locks up when burning a dvd, it takes a long time to burn, but I haven't noticed any lost data. (Basically it burns for a bit, stops and locks up, fights through it, then continues burning)
-I bluescreened once out of the 500 times it has happened, usually just waiting will cause the problem to stop.
-The hard drive activity light goes solid when it happens. Yet in task manager the system resources are not being pushed high.
-Boot times are incredibly slow, I'm talking 20 minutes from power to windows 7.

Here is a snapshot of Crystal Disk Info:
HDD.jpg


Before I spend $50 dollars on a new hard drive I'd like some advice on if this is a more serious problem so I can just invest that $50 into a new system. Any takers?
 
Did you notice anything unusual in Task Manager\performance CPU and memory usage when this happens? You might be able to isolate the problem by trying to run a Live CD like Linux DSL or something similar, and see if it still locks up.
 
I'm trying to duplicate the problem right now to double check Task Manager. I'll report once it happens again.
 
Capture-1.jpg


Basically the only thing I noticed out of the ordinary is High Active Time on the Disk stays at 100% when it happens. This was taken in the middle of the hang up.
 
sorry I didn't catch your comment "Yet in task manager the system resources are not being pushed high"
That doesn't look too bad
 
If you can boot from your DVD/CD drive, whichever you have, and see if it hangs up. If it doesn't then your problem may be the HD. Are you familiar with burning .iso images? A Linux Live CD would be great, like DSL- you could boot into it and just let it sit, see what happens. Or a Windows disc if you're careful not to re-install
 
I don't have have any blank media at the moment. I can put it on a flash drive though. Would a bootable flash drive function the same way as a bootable cd/dvd for testing?
 
shaun11 said:
I don't have have any blank media at the moment. I can put it on a flash drive though. Would a bootable flash drive function the same way as a bootable cd/dvd for testing?
Click to expand...

yes, although booting from USB isn't as foolproof as a disc drive. You have to go into the BIOS and change the startup boot order and set your boot drive first. But perhaps before all that you could try the HD test Lanyap mentioned.
 
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