dv4170us need new hard drive

Recently I had a problem with my dv4170us. Was using and and everything normal, shut it down, and just would not turn on anymore. I did restore which worked fine, but when I restart it after restoring it, it happens again, wont startup .... read something like disk error, which I believe is the hard drive. I tried my hard drive in my friends laptop, it read the same disk error so thats why I'm assuming its the hard drive.

Now can someone help me out to pick a new hard drive from www.newegg.com, I would like one of the better onces. I was looking at newegg.com but not sure which hard drive my laptop support. I would also like to upgrade the ram, which currently is at 1gb, I would like it at 2gb. Also I got a Windows Vista Business, would this laptop support Vista Business? Would it run efficiently or would it slow down.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

If your running XP now, installing Vista will slow your laptop down. 2GB of RAM will help alot. Your laptop will be a 2.5 inch hard drive, look at the back of your old hard drive and see wether it has two rows of pins for a connector. Thats Ultra ATA, if not and its a flat connector with contacts thats SATA. A good idea would be to see what the best hard drive offered with your laptop by the manufacturer is and use that as a guide.

Grand Admiral

 

How are you going about restoring it?

 

I believe when i was taking it apart I saw 2 lines of connector

For restoration, I got the HP disk, Windows Restore and Drivers/Apps CD

 

Here is a drive that will work in your notebook, and one I've been using since '06 with good luck

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152105

Here is the ram I use as well, which fits the specs for your notebook

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141209

Note: You will need 2 sticks to get to your 2GB max.......


As for Vista, I personally would stick with XP because you have an older model. I downgraded my V5201us back to XP awhile after running Vista because the performance was not as desireable due to my component limitations.

 

On many occasions I've seen bad HP System Restore Cds... so getting a new Hard drive may not solve your problems.

The bad HP CDs tend to install fully but while installing "Software Applications..." it forces you to restart and then blue screens.

 

but blue screen came before restore, thats why I tried restoring it and same thing happening

 

anything can cause a blue screen... but after you restore it should work... even on bad hard drives you should be able to get a working OS.

 

So what are you suggesting, I have a legal XP Professional copy, should i try installing it and downloading drivers from HP website?

 

Perhaps you should borrow an oem XP cd from a friend and attempt to install it that way (using your own key), at least it will determine if the problem is hardware related or not............

 

I'd try that first. I have seen that kind of an issue.... baffled the hell out of me the first time. Tried everything, new ram, new hard drive, new CPU, new DVDRW, etc.

Then I tried a new CD, went through without a hitch.

 

I'll try that end of this week hopefully that would be the problem, saving me a few bucks

If not I guess I'll have to start ordering

 

if your hard drive was dieing, your SMART enabled IDE drive will let you know its taking a dump. You can also go into your BOIS and use that to test your Hard drive... Pheonix BIOS has almost always included a Hard drive Self test in their software.

 

I saw this, what will this do?

 

It will do a surface scan of your entire hard drive and look for any either; bad sectors, or imperfections on your disks. It can take a while depending on the size of your HDD.

 

its a 100gb, but would this determine if I have a bad HDD or not?

 

Yes, it will report anything that could possibly cause an issue with the drive.

P.S.
Sorry for the late reply.

 

Did the test, no error found, Installed Windows XP Pro (not HP restore CD) and it worked!

Thanks Guys !

 

Not a prob, glad ya didn't have to spend any unneeded cash.

and thanks for the update.

 

need some more advice here

when I installed Win XP Pro, the mouse had very slow response time, driving me crazy. I order new restore CD from HP, and it was the same thing going on. In safe mode the mouse works fine. Sometimes it wont even start up, just blank screen, or win xp login screen or it will actually startup.

Anyone have any ideas what might this be?