need to have hard drive replaced & got quote...

I just got a new laptop & I am giving my old laptop to my mom. We had to bring it in because it wasn't running the best but it is still a good laptop. My mom would only use it for very basic stuff like internet, some casino gaming, listening to some music, nothing intense.
We took it in & they quoted me a price of $350 which includes a replacement 120GB, hard drive, installation, cloning of the curent drive, and cleaning (had to clean out the inside b/c kept overheating). Is that a good deal or are we getting ripped off? It's a 3 year old HP laptop.

 

Definitely do not pay $350
You can do everything you need here with us for free.

Did the current hard drive die?
If yes, than you need to buy a new harddrive
A new hard drive can run you about $60-100 at most. Cloning can be done for free it just takes a while.

Please give us the model of your HP so we can tell you which hard drive you should get as a replacement.

If the harddrive still runs and boots windows:

If it still runs you can revive the drive. Most likely the system just became overloaded with junk software after 3 years of use, causing it to run slow.
You can speed the system back up by running MSCONFIG, and shutting off background processes/programs/services which you do not use

Go to this site, it tells you what each process/service is:
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/


A fresh installation of Windows XP will solve the slowdowns. Make sure to back up all of your files on an external harddrive first. You will have to install all of your programs and files after the install. This is a good option if you have a copy of all of your programs.

Or you can try cloning,
For disc cloning, you can download a trial copy of Acronis true image from their website.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

All you do is basically install the software, follow the instructions, burn a disc and reload your files from their.
You can watch this video for more information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj7iMAgji0I


As far as dust goes, if you are handy, you can take the whole machine apart and clean out all of the dust.
Or if you dont want to do that, you can buy a can of compressed air, and clean it out that way.
Even cheaper, you can go to a gas station or something and borrow an air compressor for a few minutes. All it takes is maybe 30 seconds and all of the dust will be blown out of your laptop.

If you do it right, you dont have to pay a dime to get it back up and running again

K-TRON

 

Listen to this man^^^^^ as he is correct. This was the first computer "repair" task I ever conquered, and it was as easy as changing a car's oil. Definitely do not pay 350 for it. I mean, hell, you can get a low-end brand new laptop for that price at Wal-Mart...

All you need is a new HD, an enclosure, and a free trial of Acronis True Image. Easy-Peasy.

The cleaning, as K-Tron pointed out, is also easily manageable. Spend the money you save on a memory upgrade, a new processor, or just save it.

 

Thank you so much for the information, I do have some follow up answers to your questions & questions of my own.

- I don't know if the current hard drive died. The computer was running really slow & would often shut down. They did say the cleaning fixed the shutting down issue. How can I tell for sure if it died?
- Where can I get a new harddrive that is cheap? How difficult is it to replace?
- Not sure what model it is & I'm not sure where the paperwork it but I can find out.
- the current hard drive still runs b/c when I would use it which was as late as 2 weeks ago it would bring up windows.
- Would I do a fresh installation of Windows XP (how do I do that?) & MSCONFIG instead of having to replace Hard drive?
- What exactly is needed to do cloning - just that Adonis program? Is it really necessary b/c everything I had on that computer I need I have on my new laptop. But the games & programs that are in Windows would be on it with the fresh installation so that would work. I have links to everything else saved already.

 

- You can check your harddrive with software like hdtune.
Download it here:
http://www.hdtune.com/
Once installed, go into the "health" tab
If anything is marked in yellow or red you should replace the harddrive.
If you are unsure of what the health tab shows, you can post an image here and we can tell you.
You can also go to the "error scan" tab and run an error scan. The full scan can take an hour or so. If any of the blocks show up as red you should replace the drive.
If your drive has no errors and a good health report than the problems you are getting like shutdowns are probably software glitches/spyware on your computer

- You can get a new harddrive for cheap at newegg/zipzoomfly.
If your drive has problems explained in the first bullet of my post
Just make sure to tell us what model your laptop is, so we can determine which model harddrive you need.

- The model should be listed on the laptop somewhere, on the bottom, or on the lid, or base

- If you have the windows XP cd and the drivers you can just reinstall your operating system. All you need to do is backup your files, than install the XP cd. The cd will guide you through what you need to do. You format the harddrive, than it continues install. Than from their you just install your programs and drivers.

- You should skip cloning and just reinstall XP, it is much easier to do

K-TRON

 

350$! lol :| nice business... "which includes a replacement 120GB, hard drive" 350 and you get a 120gb lol... :| what a major rip off lol :|

 

just about $3 a GB. No you shouldnt pay it HP is a rip off with out a warrenty.

 

The shutting down problem could be caused by overheating which is usually fixed by blowing compressed computer "canned air" into the air vents to clean them out. The best method however is usually taking the laptop apart and using that air to do a more thorough job.

If its an HP computer it more than likely has a restore partition on the hard drive. I would get the exact model number and look it up on HP's support website to find the user manual and see if there is mention of a restore partition. If there is, then I would startup the laptop after cleaning the vents, and copy all your important files to a USB drive or burn to cd/dvd. then follow the instructions on doing a full restore. that will wipe the hard drive and restore the laptop back to just like the day you got it. then all you need to do is install the windows updates (service pack 3 to start with).

If it is a bad hard drive, it should be easy to replace. the user manual should show you how to acces it. usually its a panel on the side or bottom held in by a couple of screws. Newegg.com is one of the better and easier places to buy a drive from. you'll also need a windows XP disk to reinstall windows with if you install a new drive. After that you would need to download all the drivers for your laptop from HP's site for best functionality.

If you post your exact model number we can help you track down files, etc.

 

If the owner is not too tech savvy then it might be worth it for them to give the computer to a professional tech since they could possibly mess up doing it themselves. I'm sure if you find a certified, non-HP tech you could have your laptop fixed for a lot less than $350.

 

First I want to say thanks to everyone who has helped and replied.
Okay, here are my plans & requests:
We are going to get the computer back probably Monday or Tuesday. So what I would like to know is what is the first step I need to do once I get it? I know I need to check the model in case I need to get hard drive replaced. What should be my first step(s) to determine what the issue may be & what I need to do to get it fixed. And then we'll go from there b/c I'll post all my findings & try to find out the next steps after that with the results/discoveries I've made by the previous steps.
I really do appreciate all your help b/c I can't justify or afford $350 to fix a computer that won't be used for anything big.

 

Download and install HD Tune (free version), then tell us what what model hard drive is indicated. Check thumbnail for example.

Also, check the S.M.A.R.T. status (Health tab) of the drive and run the error checking utility (Error Scan tab).

 

Okay how do I download & install HD Tune (where do I get/find it). Will I be able to get online in order to download it once I get my computer back.

Where do I find the S.M.A.R.T. status (Health tab)?

 

Download hdtune here: (Version 2.55 is free)
http://www.hdtune.com/
click download on the left side
and download version 2.55

than it will save to your computer. Open the file, and follow the setup insturctions, it takes like 30 seconds to install
Once installed, click on the health tab and see what it says

If anything is in yellow or red post a screenshot, and we can tell you if you need to replace your drive or not

Yes, the S.M.A.R.T. status is in the health tab

K-TRON

 

Okay thanks. I will probably get the computer tomorrow & we don't have wireless at my house so I won't be able to download it until I go to school on Thursday, so I'll do it then & post a screenshot. So look for it then - thanks again!

 

I did a scan in the 'Error' tab twice. The pictures of the scan are attached. (they look the same to me). One big thing I noticed was that the 1st time it took about 3.5 - 4 hrs & the second time took 1.5 hrs. Also the computer didn't reset itself the whole time it was doing the scan. It started over (the blue screen) once after I first downloaded the program but since then it's been on all day w/o any problems. The Health tab shows the status as 'OK'. The model is HP Pavilion dv6000. Anything else I can or should do to determine the problem? The biggest issues I had w/ it was that it would go REALLY slow, hard to run multiple programs & it would shut down & go to the blue screen several times when using. Thanks again!

 

That red block shows that you have a bad sector on the harddrive. It will only show a problem when you go to write or read a file from that part of the drive.

If your system is running really slow, you should back up all of your files and reinstall the operating system, this will help speed up everything.

If it is still slow after reinstallation, you may want to buy a new harddrive for it.

If you do look for a new harddrive, I recommend the Hitachi 7K320, or the WD3200BEKT. Great drives for the money.

K-TRON

 

Thank so much! I have some follow up questions.
First - Any way to know which which part is damaged? Would I really to replace the harddrive for one damaged part?

Second - how would I reinstall the operating system if I don't have the Windows XP disc? I think we might have one from our home computer but I'm not positive.

Third - where would I get those hard drives? About how much do they cost?

 

1) You can find out what part is damaged but it may be hard for you to do. There is this thing called partitioning. It is basically a road block which you can set up on the harddrive. What you would need to do is put one partition on either side of the damaged sector. This way you do not use that part of the drive.
Making the partitions is the easy part, you can use software like GPART, or Partition Magic to do this.
However the hard part is finding where the bad sector is on your harddrive. It looks like it is around the 45-60GB region of your harddrive.
If you were to create a primary partition at 45GB, and another partition at 60GB, you should be able to isolate the problem. The goal is to make two partitions to split the drive into three sections. Local Disc C, D and E. D is the middle one which will have the bad sector on it.
Once you play with the sizes of the partitons, you want to get that bad sector in partition D. Once you isolate it in partition D, you do not want to use that part of the drive.
So afterwards you can use Partition C and E and have no problems.

Did I loose you anywhere?


2) You need the Windows CD in order to reinstall the operating system. If you do not have this disc, follow the first part of this post so that you do can isolate the problem.


3) The harddrives are pretty cheap. You can get the 7K320 for $50 after rebate from zipzoomfly:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10008894
I would say that it is the best bang for the buck drive on the market. It is about 2-3x faster than your current drive, and its only $50

I have three Hitachi 7K320's all of them are excellent drives, and have had no problems with any of them

If you were to buy a new harddrive, you would need to install an operating system on it. The harddrive ships as a blank slate ~ Nothing on it. You would need a copy of Windows in order to install Windows

K-TRON

 

So is it worth it to reinstall Windows or should I just get a new hard drive? If I reinstall Windows how do I uninstall it first? Is it hard to replace the hard drive myself?

 

1) You can reinstall windows if you want to, but you will still need to partition the drive if you are going to use the old harddrive. This is because you do not want to use the damaged part of the disc. The damaged region does not get fixed when you reinstall windows.
If you buy a new harddrive, you will need to install windows on the new drive, which will require no partitioning, but you will need a Windows disc

2) You do not have to uninstall Windows, you simply reinstall Windows again on the harddrive. When you go to install Windows, you are prompted to format the harddrive, which is basically how it uninstalls.

3) It is very easy to replace the harddrive. It is usually about 4-6 screws to remove and you can remove the old harddrive. Than install the new harddrive the reverse way you removed the old one.

K-TRON

 

Getting a new hard drive would that fix the running slow problem & frequent starting over? Do you know what size of Hard Drives they have?

 

A new harddrive would make your system alot faster. Your laptop can support any 9.5mm thick SATA harddrive. The best drive for the money is the Hitachi 7K320 I mentioned in my other post in this thread. It is $50 and its a 320gb 7200rpm drive.

At the start of this thread you mentioned that it would shut down every so often. This will happen if your harddrive has a bad sector. Since your drive does have a bad sector, whenever the system tries copying a file to that sector, the drive will get confused and blue screen/shut off. A new harddrive will fix this problem.

I have checked with someone who has done imaging before.
If you do not have a copy of Windows, you can download a trial of Acronis True Image and create an image of your current drive. Than you can install the image on the new harddrive. This does not require a windows cd.

If you have a windows CD, I recommend installing everything one by one, rather than imaging. I say this because you would only be installing the software you need, so it will run inherently faster.

K-TRON