t42 crashed again..any suggestions

[introibo]

Hi all,

I posted back a week or two ago; daughter's t42 had fatal error, etc.  I ended up getting a reinstall of XP, and my question back then was about how to find all the drivers.  I had it working fine in the end.

A couple of days later, daughter says it takes an awfully long time to load everything, but she was using it and it was working.

Now tonight, it doesn't fully load...it sits on the desktop with volume and virus software icons on taskbar, but no networking symbols, and it's basically frozen.  I tried safe mode and drivers seem to be working (no yellow question marks in hardware devices).  I was wondering if it was the download of Office 2007 that she downloaded from her school website...when I clicked on it, it loaded kind of funny (kept flipping between "Office" logo and "install"  icon.)..and although Word opened, another small window said something in the file was corrupt.  Tried to uninstall all of Office in the Add/Remove Programs  but since it was partially corrupt, it couldn't be uninstalled or repaired.  I even tried a System Restore to back before the Office 2007 was downloaded, but when I restarted, it still hangs/freezes on the desktop. 

Does this sound like the hard drive might be going?  I'm thinking I should try to reinstall Windows one more time for ha-ha's..

Any ideas or suggestions?

Christina

[ajkula66 Guru]

Download and burn a PC Doctor for DOS CD, then boot from it and run all the memory and hard drive tests - that will take a while...

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-56222

Good luck.

[introibo]

Thanks, I'll try this.  Dumb question..I go to your link, click on the Lenova link, and save to my desktop...to use it on the laptop, do I burn the .exe file to disk (then it probably wouldn't be able to open on the t42?) or run it on my computer and burn that file?  I'm having a senior moment here.

Christina

[introibo]

Oh, sorry, just saw the readme file, which tells how to do it.

[introibo]

Well, I'm in the middle of running this program, and it's already saying the following:

ECC error

fixed Drive 1 LBA Mode

sector size - 512 bytes

217-260-001-20110327-67 Hard Disk Drive -

Failed (error verifying sectors 33073848 etc)

The sector numbers keep changing.

Is this the hard drive that pops out of the side?

Or the  memory cards?

Does replacing whatever it is fix it?

Christina

[Maliha Community Moderator]

Hi Christina,

Yeah, that's the HDD and it has gone bad. Take out the drive and re-run the test, removal instructions can be found here:- http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-50233.html

Keep us informed.

[introibo]

Maliha,  wouldn't it obviously give a good test if the hard drive is not there?  Or can this diagnostic give a false negative?

Assuming it's the hard drive, is it possible to still buy a new drive, or would I have to get a used one off eBay?  If new ones are available, what do I look for as far as type? (I.e. do different laptops take different sized hard drives?)  And if I just pop it in and run the Windows XP reinstall disk (I've saved my drivers elsewhere) will that work?

Thanks.

Christina

[ajkula66 Guru · Accepted solution]

My preferred choice, brand new with warranty:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152110

Just pop the drive in the "old" caddy, screw it in face down, push it in, secure the cover and proceed to install XP from your CD.

Good luck.

[Maliha Community Moderator]

If you remove the drive, the test will be able to complete giving you additional information about other parts of your ThinkPad, this way you would know whether any other parts other than the drive are bad or not.