Hi,

I've been having a problem where my laptop will randomly freeze or crash and go the a blank screen with the fan still running. When I restart it will work fine for a while, any where from 45 min to hours, and then the blank screen.

I searched the forums here to try and fix the problem myself. I found in event viewer system errors on the disk event 7 which seemed to coincide with the problem and wound with this not very helpful message

Details
Product: Windows Operating System
Event ID: 7
Source: Disk
Version: 5.2
Symbolic Name: IO_ERR_BAD_BLOCK
Message: The device, %1, has a bad block.

Explanation
The device has a bad block of memory, which Windows attempted to read. The data might be missing or corrupted.


User Action
If this event is logged regularly, replace the hard disk drive.


What is regularly supposed to mean? Once a week? once a day? once an hour?

I'm fairly sure this is what's causing my problem, but is this something I should try to do myself?

I've replaced fans and floppy drives before, is this something I should attempt? If anyone could point me I the right direction I'd appreciate it.

thanks

Replacing a hard drive is basically easy. Of course you will need to reinstall XP and all your programs.

You might want to backup any important data to removable media or another hard drive.

Two things to try first are run Check Disk.

Go to start Run... cmd

Then type chkdsk /f

You will be told the drive is in use do you want to run on reboot? Type Y and reboot.

The other try is run a diagnostic on your hard drive. Who is the manufacturer of the hard drive?


If you do not know look in the Device Manager under disk drives.

Right click My Computer then click Manage then Device Manager.

OK

I ran check disk and it's a Toshiba MK8025GAS

Unfortunately Toshiba offers no diagnostic but it is reported that Maxtor's PowerMax will run on a Toshiba drive:

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. Is there another way to run the test?

Compaq had an advanced diagnostics that I ran. I got this message:

Test failed. Your hard disk might be defective. Please contact HP for further assistance. (IDE hard disk diagnostic (C)

I tried contacting them through their active chat but couldn't get it to work.

What is the exact make and model of Compaq laptop?

Is it still under warranty?

Bad Blocks are Sectors or Sections of the hard drive disk that have become damaged beyond repair. In general they are quarantined allowing the rest of the drives disk space to function.

Presario V2000 product number EH459UA#ABA

the one year warranty ran out a few weeks ago

I am just "out the door" for this evening.

I will look into that model for any ideas tomorrow if no one else has any ideas for you.