Laptop Keeps Restarting - Reboot Cycle

kbc

kbc

kbc

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As thread title really, basically I have an old Compaq laptop and it keeps rebooting and I can never boot into Windows XP. I press F8 before it loads Windows and have tried booting into "Safe Mode" and "Last Known Good Configuration" but to no avail.

I got a BSOD now and again too... But the weird thing is, this happened on a friend's old HP laptop aswell - it just keeps rebooting itself and never loads Windows. Now is this a common thing with laptops - as it gets old, the components inside just dies? I have no idea what the problem is and have even tried to reinstall Windows but it never finishes the installation and just reboots itself indefinitely...

What sort of hardware problem would cause this?
 
Joe42 said:
Laptops are probably more prone to hardware problems than desktops because of the heat, they are also much harder if not impossible to fix.

Try running a harddisk checker utlilty on it, all the major harddisk manufacturers have one that can be run from a disk.
If you leave it in the bios for a while does it still cut out?
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Hi Joe42, I couldnt' find any hard disk utility to check the hard drive, but on entering setup, I ran its built in advance "HDD Self-Test" for 28 minutes and it reported a "Read Failure"... but on the 2 minute self-test - it reported nothing.

Is this enough justification to say it's the hard drive causing the BSOD, Windows installation failure and constant reboots?
 
MAllen said:
Short answer - Yes.

Hard disks in laptops have a tough time with heat and being thrown around. So these are the main parts that fail.

You can buy a new laptop hard drive, but it depends if you have the software to reinstall on it. Most laptops have the recovery data stored on the hard disk, so pretty useless in your case as the drive is failing.

If you have an XP OS disk, you should be able to reinstall using the XP Key on the bottom of the machine. (Though you will need the same version of XP on the disk to what is on the machine)


The old data can be rescued from the old hard drive by getting a convertor cable and plugging it into a normal PC. Or you could buy a cheap caddy for it and attach it via USB.
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Ah... ... Thanks for clearing this up. It's a shame the HDD die so often with laptops. Luckily I've got a caddy to hopefully rescue the data. I think the next challenge is opening this laptop up and removing the drive. =/
 
MAllen said:
The nice laptops have an easy to remove tray with one screw..... but I was working on a Toshiba earlier which forced me to remove a dozen screws to get there. Keyboard and wrist wrest all had to come off, with their specially hidden screws. Then I could get to the hard disk.

This is also a good way of being able to test the disk in a separate PC.

A hint: Grab your most valuable data BEFORE you let CHKDSK at it. I have had disks fail totally during the CHKDSK as it pushes it over the edge. So best bet it to burrow down to your docs folder and grab it first before trying to salvage anything else.

I have just noticed that you are a fellow Brightonian... so if you have problems getting hold of the right cable to connect your laptop drive to a normal sized caddy, let me know. I could lend ya mine. :D (Email in Trust)
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Heh... if it's as easy as you make it out to be, should be a simple process. :p The main thing is just being able to get the data off it. It's an old Compaq Presario 2800 with 256MB RAM. :cool:
 
MAllen said:
I have just had a look in the offical Compaq destruction manual for you. And sure enough, it is a simple one screw tray.

If you are a curious person... I can email you a copy of the manual in PDF form. :D
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What!?! I've just unscrewed about 15 screws on the back of the laptop, please email a copy of the manual. :) Thanks.
 
MAllen said:
You have mail....
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Ah, damn I just worked it out.... :rolleyes:

Thanks for the manual though.... will keep it for reference! :)

I'm going to try and grab the data first by using a caddy I've got and if that works, then I'll try formatting the drive and see if Windows works on it again...
 
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MAllen said:
As Joe42 points out, there are official manufacture test disks that you will also need to make use of. No point putting a drive back in that is duff.

Check manufacture of drive, then check their site.
Click to expand...

OK will do, it's a "Hitachi DK23DA-30F 30GB". Will see what I can find. ;)
 
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