Need a second Opinion

[comda]

Hey guys!

My brother lately appears to be having issues with his little Toshiba Laptop. Is a 12inch Toshiba L645D in blue that has a little AMD Athlon P340, 4Gb DDR3 RAM, 500GB mementus hard drive and running windows 10 home (upgraded from 7 home 64bit). This isnt no rocket computer, but for a high school teen to carry with him, perfect.

Anyways the last few days he's been complaining to me about freezes in windows. No BSOD and not even anything intensive. PLaying a video he made on a mac in VLC and even just browsing the net. What will happen is the mouse will freeze and nothing will move.

Since ive looked at it, its frozen countless times sometimes right away, other times its taken some time. A few times it went to sleep and wouldnt come out, or it would but only show the cursor and then nothing.

So far ive run a check disk going into my computer>right click the hard drive>properties>tools>check now and it came out fine. Im currently running Memtest 5 and it already passed one session.

I did think that perhaps its over heating... I blew out the exhaust and than managed to get HWmonitor running and found it ran around 50 degrees C on idle. However now that im looking at it running mem test its at 64 degrees Celcius..

Im not 100% sure if its the hard drive, the RAM or something in the system that has corrupted itself..Or its overheating..

Any feedback would be appreciated. And as always it is well appreciated. Thanks

[BC_Programmer]

I've seen this symptom about a dozen times. In every single instance, it was the Hard Disk.

running a chkdsk /r to completion should confirm that. Replacing the HDD Is the best option if that is the case, though the chkdsk /r could give it a short second wind.

[comda]

Thanks for the reply, i tried getting into CMD but i cant get that far. Ive tried using HDD regenerator which runs off a CD and it even froze that. Would it still be the HDD if it froze a live CD?

[DaveLembke]

Try memtest86 and see if the RAM is healthy

[BC_Programmer]

Thanks for the reply, i tried getting into CMD but i cant get that far. Ive tried using HDD regenerator which runs off a CD and it even froze that. Would it still be the HDD if it froze a live CD?

Given the Live CD in question would specifically be accessing the HDD, yes.

Best way to confirm is to slap a known-good HDD in temporarily and see if the issue can be reproduced.

[comda]

Try memtest86 and see if the RAM is healthy

Im currently running Memtest 5 and it already passed one session.

 However now that im looking at it running mem test its at 64 degrees Celcius..

Thanks but as you can see from my original post ive ran mem test already... And it has no issues.. But thanks for the feedback..

[comda]

Given the Live CD in question would specifically be accessing the HDD, yes.

Best way to confirm is to slap a known-good HDD in temporarily and see if the issue can be reproduced.

Well my plan is to pop in a nice SSD temporarily and have the other drive run check disk with windows as a slave..

[DaveLembke]

  oops didnt see the memtest when posting earlier. Then its likely what BC stated with HDD and software that runs to a bummed HDD hanging and thats why live CD hangs

[comda]

oops didnt see the memtest when posting earlier. Then its likely what BC stated with HDD and software that runs to a bummed HDD hanging and thats why live CD hangs

Thats alright. I try to post as much info in my original posts about the granted issue. I was in no way trying to be rude when i showed you that. Just showing that it was already stated thats all.

But i think ill pop that SSD im not currently using into it so my brother can have something to use, while i plug in the 500GB drive into another computer and go into CMD and run check disk and see how it goes.. its not that old a drive....

I acquired the machine because the original owner's 640GB drive had been dying throwing smart errors. I got the machine because they came to me asking for advice to get a better one, and even when offering a new hard drive they said they need a 17inch laptop so i can have it. Its been maybe 4 years ive had the new drive....

[BC_Programmer]

It sounds like it was already on it's way out when you got it. I've had drives given to me clearly sharpied as Duds that worked for over a decade since I owned it, And I've had brand new HDDs out of the factory packaging last less than 3 years before suffering catastrophic failure.

[comda]

Well, again i replaced the dying drive with a brand new one from Tigerdirect back when they still had physical stores. it has a 500Gb momentus. im currently as we speak downloading windows 10 ISO's from microsofts site and plopping the SSD in

[comda]

Hey guys...

Quick update.. I Installed a nice Kingston SSD 240Gb in the machine and began installing windows 10 Pro..... And the computer froze on the installation at 27% in... So if its not RAM, and not HDD we got what a board failure?

[DaveLembke]

I've had drives given to me clearly sharpied as Duds that worked for over a decade since I owned it, And I've had brand new HDDs out of the factory packaging last less than 3 years before suffering catastrophic failure.

Grins ... Got some good drives this way as well as 2 other 500GB drives that were marked dead that still were covered by warranty yet thrown out. For the cost of shipping drives back and filling out the RMA paperwork I got healthy replacements for around $7.00 each shipping. 

A 164GB SATA drive manufactured in 2004 I got for free this way and it has 4 bad sectors, but the sectors remapped by the drive healing itself with spare sectors and the drive has been healthy for last 6 years and over 50,000 run hours. The drive must have gotten bumped at some point scratching a platter and another IT guru flagged it as junk and tossed it, but otherwise all else is well with it. I batter this drive hard as a DVR type of drive when recording online mmorpg game play with FRAPS. Heavy writes processed on the drive for last 4 years of the 6 years since getting it and no further degradation of it.

As far as new drives failing the last new drive that failed on me I sent it back a 120GB IDE drive and they shipped me back a 250GB as a replacement. I was very happy that they substituted the replacement with a 250GB instead. Thank You Seagate!!! 

Thats alright. I try to post as much info in my original posts about the granted issue. I was in no way trying to be rude when i showed you that. Just showing that it was already stated thats all.

Nope not rude in any way. All is good. I sometimes am here and multitasking to pass time and I miss important details. 

[patio]

Hey guys...

Quick update.. I Installed a nice Kingston SSD 240Gb in the machine and began installing windows 10 Pro..... And the computer froze on the installation at 27% in... So if its not RAM, and not HDD we got what a board failure?

What install media are you using ? ?

[comda]

What install media are you using ? ?

I downloaded the windows 10 ISO from microsoft's website and burned it to a DVD 4.7Gb. I guess i could try the media on another machine but its odd how the comptuer freezes in everything including third party software. the only place ive yet to see it freeze is Memtest 85. But it frooze on the windows 10 install and even on HDD regenerator.

I noticed temps go to 64c in memtest and stay there. Im wondering if perhaps the CPU or chipset is overheating.... if thats the case i wont have a chance to look at the system for some time.. But just to be sure its not my windows 10 disk.. ill pop in my trusty windows 7 DVD and give that a run and see if i can complete an install.