Hi I wonder if you can help please, or if my laptop is terminally ill. It intermittently won't start up, and has an error message No hard drive. When it does occasionally start up, it frequently freezes and makes a noise like it's winding down. Please can you help at all or is it time to buy a new one ?

To be honest, there could be a number of causes for this problem but the most likely is a failing hard disk. Try running Scandisk on it. You can do this by right-clicking your hard disk in Windows Explorer, selecting Properties on the menu, clicking the Tools tab and clicking either 'Scandisk' or 'Check disk for errors'.

That's not a great "fix any problem" kind of tool but it might point out some errors that give you more confidence that that's the problem.

If your hard disk is dying, you don't need to necessarily replace the whole laptop. You can buy a new hard drive and fit it as a replacement to the old one. Bear in mind that you would need to install Windows, all device drivers, all programs and all your data onto the new drive though, which is a big job for those that haven't done it before and a relatively expensive job if you pay someone else to do it as it's quite time-consuming.

Hope that helps in some way

Thanks for the advice. The laptop had already run scandisk automatically itself. I'll get a quote for replacing the hard disk and take it from there. Your advice is appreciated.

No problem. Let us know how you get on