I Woke Up a Cranky Laptop

[Evenodd]

I did as you said and this is my screen right now:

I can navigate through the menus. Which one should I choose?

 

[Ketchup]

Good. Run anything available under the hardware diagnostics.

 

[Evenodd]

For the Quick Test, it said everything was fine.

Here's what I got for the Individual Test:

In Tools, it said it fixed/repaired the C:\, D:\, and E:\.

 

[Ketchup]

Did it do anything different when you booted it back up?

 

[Evenodd]

I got to the screen with the boot choices then pressed "last known good configuration", and thereafter I successfully logged into my account.

I opened the command prompt and did a "sfc /scannow" and then a "chkdsk /r". This is what happened after I restarted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKOfl45TcOI&feature=youtu.be

It kept cycling like this endlessly and I've shut my computer down.

 

[Ketchup]

See if it will boot into safe mode. Before doing anything else, if there is any data you need to get off the drive, now would be the time to get it. Otherwise that USB enclosure we were speaking of earlier would be the next way to go.

At this point (actually earlier but gladly pretty sure the damage isn't worse), it sounds like your hard drive is on it's last leg. Usually when they start developing bad sectors, they will continue to grow over time.

You will want to look into getting those restore discs we were talking about earlier and a new drive for the laptop.

 

[Evenodd]

It won't go into safe mode. It does the same thing in the video, but that's okay I think; I didn't have anything important on my laptop anyways.

Alright, I'll probably get the enclosure, restore disks and new drive later this year. It's really hard for me to get my parents to buy me things over $10. LOL

How do I know what hard drive to buy?

Why do I need more than one restore disk and where can I find those?

When I get the enclosure, do you want me to tell you what's happening so you can determine "if there is readable data on the drive, or if it is toast"? Or if there are there obvious clues for me to tell by myself, what are they?

Thanks for all your help thus far, I really appreciate it. 🙂

 

[Ketchup]

Ah, parents! Never understood them until my wife and I made them grandparents! I will be surprised if they go by a random person on an online forum, but we'll see.

To answer your questions:
1. I am not sure where you are, but a replacement drive similar to what you had is around $50 USD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...98&ignorebbr=1

1a. If you have particularly understanding parents, you can ask them if you can get a solid state drive for the laptop, and this particular issue would never happen again
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148820
as these drives have no moving parts.

2. The reason I say discs plural is because all or the restore data probably will not fit on one disc. The original restore data that came on the computer is sitting on the hard drive that is dying.

3. To order restore discs for you laptop, this page will tell you what to do:
https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/40648/c/65,66/p/48903,49902,55369,55424/

4. Hard drives die for various reasons, and to be honest it is amazing they last as long as they do. In your case, you have a disc that is spinning at 5400 RPM (desktop drives spin at 7200 RPM) whenever the computer is running, with nothing but a few mm between it and an arm that moves to grab the data that the RAM is requesting, based on what you are asking it to do.

5. If you don't care about recovering data on the drive, I wouldn't worry about the enclosure.

Good luck!

 

[Ketchup]

One more thing:

This page has something you can try on a short term fix Try the steps, but 5 is the one I am most interested in). Depending on where the errors on the hard drive are, this may/may not work:

https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30721/c/65,66/

 

[Evenodd]

Okey-dokey, I'll try the steps in the article later today!

I really appreciate your time, thanks a lot for all your assistance! ^_^

 

[Ketchup]

You're welcome. Best of luck!

 

[Gunbuster]

That Geforce is from around the dark days of bad solder balls in Nvidia land. Sitting it on your bed for some gnarly thermal cycling probably didn't help it much.