Laptop Help

[zums]

Hey guys -

Having trouble with my laptop, and hoping you can provide some good advice in troubleshooting and/or repairing this thing so it is functional again (or pointing me in the right direction for where to seek such help).

System is an HP Pavilion dv6700 running Windows 7 32 bit. Used essentially as a desktop as it is connected via HDMI to a Samsung monitor with USB keyboard/mouse. No recent changes to hardware, software (that I'm aware of), or any connections.

However, a few weeks ago I came down one morning to a BSOD. Didn't think much of it, restarted, and things were fine. Came home from work that afternoon and it was sitting on another BSOD. Hmmm. Basically this progressed to a point where Windows would start but within a couple minutes would BSOD. As I was trying to troubleshoot, the last blow was when I was in Safe Mode and it BSOD'd with a different error.

Since that time, it will turn on, flash the HP boot screen (can get into the boot menu, etc) then go to a black screen with a flashing cursor in the upper left and hangs there forever.

Things I have tried:

- Ran a PC restore from my HP Mediasmart home server. Boots to disk, goes through the entire lengthy process, but upon restart hangs at the same place.
- Tried a complete reinstall of Windows 7. Same as the restore... Goes through the process but hangs in the same place on restart.
- Ran Memtest86 v4.0 to test the RAM, came back clean
- Finally last night I got back in the mood to work on this thing, and ran Seagate SeaTools for DOS. Came back with 13 errors or bad sectors. Unfortunately the drive is not a Seagate drive so any repair options within SeaTools were disabled.

My question(s)... does this sound like a hard drive issue, and would simply replacing the drive get the pc functional again? At this point I'm hoping this is it as I don't know what else to do and it is a cheaper option than replacing the entire laptop.

If not, what else could it be? Please help with other troubleshooting/repair options... Somewhat tech savvy but have reached my limitations. Don't want to buy a HD and then that's not the issue. Never replaced any system drive either so may need some help there as well... Not concerned with data loss as I have a backup on my server that I should be able to recover to.

I know this is long but wanted to include any info that might be relevant. Can post a screenshot of the HD test results if that would help in any way. Been down awhile and have been able to function for the most part with my iPad only, but starting to get to a point where I need a full PC again.

Thanks in advance

[cartman]

That does sound like the hard drive. They are easy enough to replace on that particular laptop, and should be $60-90 for a new hard drive. If you've done the system backup to your home server, then you should be able to run the same restore process to a new drive and be back in business.

[stevew]

Sounds like my HD that crashed.

[stevew]

Mount the HD in a desktop and run some tests on it to be sure.

[zums]

Thanks guys, all things considered not bad if that's what is going on.

One more question, does the size of the new HD matter? It's a 320 GB now, do I need a matching size? Or if not matching at least bigger?

[stevew]

Hdd size doesn't matter. If you can, get a 256mb SSD. Solid state drives are a huge update to an older machine.

[cartman]

Thanks guys, all things considered not bad if that's what is going on.

One more question, does the size of the new HD matter? It's a 320 GB now, do I need a matching size? Or if not matching at least bigger?

You will want at least the same size. Depending on how the backup is being done, and how the restore process works, you'll need at least 320GB. A quick check of NewEgg shows that there really isn't much of a price difference between 320GB and 500GB.

When I got my latest laptop, I sold my dv7000 to my cousin, and it recently needed a new hard drive as well.

[cartman]

Hdd size doesn't matter. If you can, get a 256mb SSD. Solid state drives are a huge update to an older machine.

If he was doing a clean install, I'd agree. But since he has a backup that sounds like it is imaged based, it probably won't be able to install to a smaller HDD. I had this issue when I replaced my 320GB HDD with a 256GB SSD. I had to move stuff off of the 320GB drive, and then shrink the partition to 256GB before it would transfer to the SSD.

[MizzouRah]

HD issue.. agreed.

Good advice Cartman.. I will say however, I love my SSD. So is the backup data or like a ghost image?

[stevew]

Maybe just do a completely new install of windows and move over the files you need from your backup?