Dead/dying laptop

I have a 7 year old HP laptop that has been totally bomb-proof, until yesterday. The cooling fan had been getting a bit noisy, and yesterday it finally locked up. Windows would not run without the cooling fan operating.

I ordered a new fan overnight, and this afternoon I had the lovely task of ripping my laptop apart. Naturally the fan was deep in the belly of the beast, but I found a good guide and I think I got it successfully reinstalled. Feeling pretty proud of myself, I fired it up... And no luck. After a while I realized my keyboard wasn't working properly, so I took it apart and reseated the keyboard ribbon cable and now that works right.

But I still have a problem with Windows booting up. Various things happen:
* Sometimes the blue window icon displays with the spinning circle below it, and after a few seconds the spinning circle stops.
* Sometimes the circle keeps spinning forever.
* Sometimes the boot process goes into an error detection operation. It says preparing to repair, diagnosing your PC, automated repair could not repair your system, and then there are several options to do various troubleshooting things. (Recovery Environment?)
* I've tried all of those troubleshooting options except resetting my PC. I couldn't restore to a restore point.
* I tried to start it in safe mode. It started to boot up in safe mode, then it suddenly rebooted back to normal boot with the same problems above.
* I had an Acronis image backup from the night before the disk died, so I restored that back up. No change, same behavior.

I'm past due for a new laptop, but I really would like to keep this one around to get data off it and keep using it in the background for a while. Any suggestions how I might resurrect this faithful old beast?

Gary

Hey! I tried again, and I was able to boot into safe mode. I successfully logged in, but I wasn't sure what I should do. Thinking maybe something had gotten fixed, I tried booting normally, and it went back to the same problems. I tried to get back into safe mode, and it said "we can't complete the updates" and wouldn't boot to safe mode.

Assuming I can find my way back into safe mode again, any suggestions what I might want to do while I'm there?

Thanks!
Gary

Anyone?

I noticed this morning that there are a bunch of System errors in Event Viewer -- mostly DistributedCom getting 1084 errors because it can't start some service. This is a recent thing -- I'm not certain but I think they started after I did the Acronis image restore...

I didn't notice a message saying it couldn't repair files -- it said it DID repair them. It generated 20k lines of messages, including lots of "duplicate ownership" and "primitive installers" messages. After rebooting, no improvement. I'll try the DISM commands later today. Thanks!

/CheckHealth didn't find any problems.
/RestoreHealth completed successfully -- but no improvement on reboot.

Thanks anywho...

The steps above when completed will provide information on the drive, the drive file system, and the operating system.

If you cannot get back into safe mode perform the following steps:
Power on the computer and repetitively click the F2 key
This should open the BIOS HP UEFI diagnostics.
On most HP computers there are default diagnostics to test the RAM and HD.
If you had downloaded the HP UEFI diagnostics from the HP website it will have system tests including extensive and loop until failure.
These tests can be ran overnight and checked in the AM.
The HP tests are designed to abort if there is a failure.
The testing then could be incomplete as the the later test are not performed.
Report into the thread the tests that were performed and the results.

If you can boot to safe mode then after you have completed the above steps download and install:
HP diagnostics windows: HP PC Hardware Diagnostics | HP® Official Site
(See the right upper area of the link)
Perform the system tests.

dalchina said:

What is your Windows build? Windows key + R, winver

Version 1803, build 17134.285

I'm guessing your specs under My Computer are not for this PC.Please post model number, disk details.

? Why would you assume the specs aren't for this computer?
Model: dv7-6199us
Part#: QD977UA#ABA
Disk: Crucial BX100 250GB SSD

- possible temperature issues? As you've taken it apart, presumably it's fairly clean inside.

It definitely warmed up a few times while it was spinning in a "can't boot up" state but it's running fine now, in safe mode at least.

Have you updated the BIOS to the latest available?

No.

1. First check your disk(s):

No problems there: (BTW I don't believe the "144 days power-on time" since I installed it over 3 years ago and it usually runs 24x7...)

Also do a surface scan of the disk (using either tool).

Only available to registered purchasers. Given the disk is "PERFECT" I'm gonna assume this isn't necessary.

2. Now check your file system:chkdsk C: /FPost back the result, which you can get after a restart as follows:

NO events. Zero. I also scanned the Event Viewer manually, and ran the PowerShell alternative. Nada.

3. Now check your system files:SFC /SCANNOW

Ran that yesterday. It generated 20k lines of log messages, including lots of "duplicate ownership" and "primitive installers" messages. After rebooting, no improvement.

zbook said:

If you can boot to safe mode then after you have completed the above steps download and install:
HP diagnostics windows: HP PC Hardware Diagnostics | HP® Official Site

Unfortunately "The Windows Installer Service is not accessible in Safe Mode" ...