Laptop shuts down after Win7 initial load

[Citizen K]

My original hard drive failed without warning after I put it into hibernation for 2 days and I am trying to set up a temporal hard drive of 20GB just to utilize for internet access and other things. At first I managed to set it up, but I couldn’t access certain parts of Windows such as Control Panel or even My documents. This was when i had not even installed MS Office or anything else. I then decided to re-install and then the following happened:
When I begin the setup it loads the Win7 files until it gets to the point where the screen goes blue (background) and says ‘setup is loading’. Then the entire laptop goes off. I have checked the hard drive for errors, according to the program HDtune (the free version), there are none. At first I had a USB hub and a wireless mouse hooked to the laptop, so I removed the two thinking the problem came from there. It went off again. So I decided to format the partitions (1 is 100MB and says ‘System Reserved’ fully (NTFS) and try again, to no avail. I then downloaded HDtune PRO which told me I had a problem with the re-allocated sector count (whatever that means, but there was a warning sign next to it) and that 6 sectors were faulty/damaged. (The scan however shows me nothing).
Also, I have another laptop T41p which when I start it up gives me absolutely nothing, no BIOS, or IBM splashscreen, fan assembly is running well and it does not shut down. The only issue is the DVD-ROM/CD-RW slot, which doesn’t seem to work.
My specs are: IBM Thinkpad T40p, Pentium M, 1GB RAM

[DaveLembke]

The 20GB HD is probably toast that you are trying to use. Each hard drive has a reserved space to use for reallocation of sectors, but if you have used up all this reserved space and still have bad sectors, the best thing to do is get a new or better used hard drive. A good test for that laptop to see if it will stay running or is shutting down for some other reason is burn a CD with Knoppix or another Live Linux Distro and remove the hard drive. Boot the laptop up with this bootable Live Linux OS CD and once its completed with its load process, surf the web, open up Open Office etc and maybe even try out a could bundled games. If the laptop has not shut down by now on its own and is running ok, then I'd say that hard drive was causing the issue with a swap space memory crash causing your system to shutdown or some other GPF which caused shutdown.

The other laptop, i'd plug a VGA monitor into the VGA output and see if you are dealing with a bad laptop display. If still no video try reseating RAM with battery out of laptop and laptop unplugged from power supply. Ad as far as bad optical drive you will have to replace that if you plan on using it. You might just find if you have a monitor around that the IBM that appears to be black screen actually works fine with an external monitor, but optical drive is bad. You can then maybe find a similar laptop on ebay to buy for a parts swap for good display etc or check amazon.com for good used parts. Amazon has come in helpful for lots of used or new oem and non-oem parts.

[Citizen K]

Thanks for the help Dave, I might try out the Linux alternative you mentioned, but I guess that HDD is fried too. It's pretty old. I was only planning to use the 20GB for a couple of months during which I will ready myself for a completely new laptop. This kind of took me by surprise, so I'll have to go for the new one earlier than I thought.