Laptop Error Msg

[Bert Kemp]

I have left my laptop that runs my laser on for like ever, lately its been doing weird things like just trying to reboot or something and theres a msg on the screen that say can't find boot device. I have to hard shut down and then start it again and it goes thru a gazillion checks and then says it had an abnormal shut down press any key to restart. then it will restart and be ok for a couple hours then It does it again and I have to go thru the whole process again.
any ideas whats going on????

[Kev Williams]

'Can't find boot device' is *typically* (but not always) a prelude to hard drive failure. It can also be an iffy cable, but wait, you said laptop... never opened a laptop in my life...

Go into BIOS and see what is says your hard drive is. Dead giveaway when my old e-machine died was BIOS calling mine "Generic Hard Drive". If your BIOS can tell the drive is there but can't get the mfr info off it, it's likely a goner :( If your drive comes up "Maxtor" or whatever brand it is, that's good-- In your BIOS *should be* some diagnostics menus, if so find the hard drive test and run it...

That's all I got I'm afraid...

[Alan Caro]

Bert Kemp,

Kev Williams is probably on the right track suggesting the fault is a failing hard drive.

1. When certain sectors go bad, they are relocated, but there is a limited re-allocation. There is a disk checking utility in Windows: Press the Windows Button > "Search programs and files", type: "chkdsk" and right click on the listing above to "Run as administrator". This will list errors.

415108

2. The hard drive could be so highly fragmented and the files spread out over the entire drive, that it's timing out looking for the boot sectors. Run the Defragmenter utility.

3. Another possibility is that laptops are so compact, the air flow is restricted and moreso in a hot and/or dusty environment, there can be thermal shutdown. Mechanical drives are more prone to this kind of failure, but the restarting instead may be thermal shutdown based on the processor temperature. Clean the interior of the laptop case of dust and consider cloning the current drive if mech'l. to an SSD.

Alan

[Bert Kemp]

Ill try these tomorrow thanks guys

[Bert Kemp]

Well I tried to get into the bios by pressing f2 at boot up it takes me to a screen thats not the bios and all I see in the menu is BIOS events. The events listed all have to do with low battery levels. I tried to take a screen shot but I guess that doesn't work in that area. I did some systems maint and deleted some files as my hard drive was pretty full. I've been shutting it down after use and so far its still working. LOL

[Lee Schierer]

I would advise backing up critical files as soon as possible. Laptop batteries do go bad and are generally easy to replace.

[Kev Williams]

For BIOS, try F1--

For other 'events', right click 'my computer', click 'manage', when the console comes up, on the left side of the screen, click 'event viewer'- you'll get a list of logs, on my win7 there's a 'windows logs' folder, with subfolders Application, Security, Setup, System, and Forwarded Events- "System" would be my first choice to check-- it can take a minute to load up all the events, there can be thousands, newest first. The events are listed as 'information', 'warning' and 'critical', and the list starts newest events on top- You'll likely have a crapload of 'critical' and 'warning'-- click or double-click on those and an explanation will come up. Read thru a few, you'll likely find a lot of repeat errors, and hopefully might explain the problem a bit...

Also check 'Application' errors, that lists errors with programs, which sometimes coincides with system errors...