Help!! Vista Gets Black Screen On Boot. Can Hard Drive Be Failing??

Hi well i have a Gateway T-1616 Laptop.

I had Vista installed when i got it but the new vista got to me and i decided to go with the unsupported xp and find my own drivers.
All was well till a while ago when i realized that the computer was starting to lag a little.
One of the problems was that the Disk Defragmenter would constantly freeze but in general the laptop seemed to be lagging alot. The hard drive seemed to be taking coffee breaks whenever it wanted and the hard drive would stop spinning then a min or a few after it would spin up again and keep on moving...
Anyhow
Yesterday i decided to format my laptop and put in Vista Ultimate. After the installation and all that i booted up the comp. and after the green loading bar the screen goes blank for about 5-10 minutes and then the hard drive seems to kick back in and the computer starts up and no problem.

My fear is that my hard drive is failing and that the disk defragmenter and the constant lagging means that my hard drive may be failing.
Is this possible?

I would rather find a way how to eliminate the lag when booting up the comp.
Please let me know if you have any ideas that i can try.

Thanks,
Jack

 

Well, if you suspect the hard drive is failing, the first thing to do is to run some diagnostics on it to see if that's the case. You should be able to download a diagnostic utility from the hdd manufacturer's website which will give you a sense as to whether or not it's failing.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.
Iran the chkdsk function numerous times in numerous different installations and all seemed fine.
For now i just put xp back into my laptop still working on finding some drivers but once again it is lagging.
I am hoping to still get an answer to this but thanks for your advice again

 

sounds like a graphics problem

 

But nothing has changed at all since the original installation of windows? + it seemed to gradually slow down and then with the new installation of vista is when i realized the lag and black screen.

 

Have you checked your event logs to see if there is anything in them that might suggest the source of your problem?

 

Well right now there prob. wont be much of an event log xince im pretty much on a fresh format but i don't know how to check an event log...

any explanation on the process?

thanks!

 

rightclick the Computer icon on your desktop, choose Manage, and in the left tree, you will see the event history / event viewer (sorry i cannot remember the exact label, i don't have english vista here). expand it (click on the small "+" sign) and look at Applications and System event history log.

 

Im Running xp pro now