WTF happened to this laptop?

[Nvidiaguy07]

Ok so this is what happened:

My aunts computer was giving her a BSOD at boot with the error "no bootable boot volume" or something like that. I put the XP cd in and repaired it and i thought everything was fine.

It booted into windows and eveything seemed OK but then i noticed that it was going a little slow. It seemed to only get slower from there. It takes about 3-5 mintues to get into windows. 2 mins just to boot up firefox. and in general its like running in slow motion.

Im not sure what to do. Im about to just do a fresh install of XP but then if this persists than could it have been something with the hardware?

i dont know.... any suggestions please let me know what you think.

 

[octopus41092]

Try to scan for viruses and such, it might have been a virus that messed up the filesystem earlier.

 

[Lanyap]

Sounds like the hard drive is going bad. Run Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT). It will test any brand HD. I had several laptops act like this in the past few months and they all had bad HDs.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

 

[daveybrat]

Originally posted by: Lanyap
Sounds like the hard drive is going bad. Run Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test (DFT). It will test any brand HD. I had several laptops act like this in the past few months and they all had bad HDs.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Definitely sounds like the hard drive is failing and caused the original blue screen error. It's running super slow now because the hard drive is probably running in PIO mode instead of DMA mode.

Test the hard drive first.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

im about to test it now. I thoguth the problem was solved last night after i reinstalled windows. It was working fine again, very fast. Then i booted up today to put a few more things on and BAM! i got the same BSOD.

I can just run that program from booting from the cd right? i dont get why they say bootable CD for windows, linux, etc. Does it even matter? Im used to tools like gparted and ult boot CD. Is this the same thing?

Also what could have caused this just so i can tell her. I just put a new HD in for her 1 year ago. Could she have dropped it?

Also before i fixed the computer last time i boot and nuked the HD just to make sure everything was clean.

 

[Laputa]

Hard drives are not built to last forever. There's always tear and wear and then it goes like tires and light bulbs. Possibly bad sectors and smart error will make the system runs slow, or a faulty circuit board. Runs fine when cold and acts up when it gets excited.