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    Travelmate 8103 Failing IDE Controller

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by keptile, Jun 27, 2008.

  1. keptile

    keptile Newbie

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    Recently, my travelmate 8100 occasionally began to fail to boot. It freezes before Windows XP loading screen and sometimes even cannot find the HDD. When it succeeds to boot, Windows XP gives BSODs like Kernel_Stack_Inpage_Error, indicating a failure in HDD. I am also using Kubuntu Linux and it freezes with similar errors. I checked the SMART status of the HDD, which indicated that the drive was nearly dead. So I decided to replace it with a new Samsung 160GB PATA HDD. However, problems did not cease. It gives BSODs with the same errors before a half hour of usage and refuses to boot again for a random time. In addition, the crashes cause filesystem damages. I tried reinitializing the drives (i.e. low level format with tools in the website of Samsung), clean OS installations, but still same issues. I even reflashed the BIOS several times. By the way, it runs fine when I use a Live Linux CD. I guess that the IDE controller is failing. The computer is 3 years old and its warranty is over.

    What are your suggestions?
    Thank you.
    Keptile
     
    keptile, Jun 27, 2008
    #1
  2. tumnasgt

    tumnasgt Notebook Evangelist

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    Welcome to the forums.

    Hate to be the one to say it, but it sounds like it's time for a new machine. There is no way it will be cost efficient to repair the travelmate by the time it is 3 years old.
     
    tumnasgt, Jun 27, 2008
    #2
  3. bigozone

    bigozone JellyRoll touring now

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    i think he is right....

    time to part that old laptop out and sell the extras on EBAY.. make a little cash back

    later,

    bigO
     
    bigozone, Jun 27, 2008
    #3