Computer Fun

[sraun]

iraunink's laptop (an IBM Thinkpad) died the other day. It looked like it was starting Windows, then went black, and nothing happened. When I tried to boot it in Safe Mode, it got to the fourth or fifth line, and died. :-(

I ended up finding a package that would test the hard-drive, and it found some very dead clusters. Marked bad, now I'm doing a Windows reinstall. It's currently pulling down WinXP Service Pack 2 - or trying to. I anticipate that getting Service Packs will be a big part of what I'm spending time on tomorrow.

At some point in the near future, we should get a new hard-drive for it. Anyone have a 2.5" PATA drive they don't need any more? Anything less than 100GB should be good.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Wednesday, I stopped at the ATM near my doctor's office. It was booting. RAM tests and everything. At one point it flashed the OS2 banner. Then started rebooting again. I wound up using another machine.

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Bad sectors universally mean "imminent death and data corruption" in my experience.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I thought I had a bad HD once, but it was just not well seated.

I have a HD around here somewhere but I think it's only like 6GB.

[sraun]

Since large hard-drives and LBA, I agree. Before then, not so much.

But, yeah, I expect it to die again soonish. Which is why we're going to be in search of a replacement drive. I don't know if I'll clone this one to it, or just build a new install - what I'm doing to get this one working is pretty ugly.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

I've got one kicking around here somewhere--but I don't really think you'll want it. See, the reason I replaced it was because it was showing symptoms of Imminent Electronic Death (tm).

But if you're willing to take the chance on it, let me know and I'll see if I can find it, wipe it clean, and send it to you.

[sraun]

I think not - since I posted this, the laptop in question has stopped booting. One long beep, two or three short - when I looked up the POST Beep codes for Thinkpads, it said 'bad video card'. I've given up on resurrecting it - I pulled the hard-drive, got the data off it using a USB enclosure, and am now trying to get a Toshiba running Mandriva to work for iraunink. It's mostly working - the two current frustrations are getting the touch-pad to work (which she doesn't care about as much - she'll use the external mouse, if it had a trackpoint that wasn't working she'd be upset), and getting Mandriva to connect to a hidden, password-protected Samba share on a Debian box.