Laptop in trouble?

swintonphotoswintonphoto Registered Users Posts: 1,664 Major grins
edited May 11, 2009 in Digital Darkroom
I have been nursing my laptop along for 4 years. I do most of my work on a much more powerful desktop, but last night my laptop crashed and took 40 minutes to turn back on. It seems to be working fine today. Do you think it's on its last legs? How do I know if the hard drive is on the way out?

Comments

  • Art ScottArt Scott Registered Users Posts: 8,959 Major grins
    edited May 11, 2009
    I have been nursing my laptop along for 4 years. I do most of my work on a much more powerful desktop, but last night my laptop crashed and took 40 minutes to turn back on. It seems to be working fine today. Do you think it's on its last legs? How do I know if the hard drive is on the way out?

    Most hdd get noisey when they are on their way out. While it is working good get it cloned or at least backed up.....Acronis makes great cloning software......it is beter than Ghost or any of the others.....it was the only one that all of my software worked flawlessly afterwards......what I use if MIGRATE.....which they stil ahve the last issue of and their trial version is a full working version.......best to use exact same size hdd or slightly larger.....it can compress and go to a smaller but that creates problems and you ahve to babysit them while migrating......if you go same size or larger no babysitting....all auto.........

    While I have your attention:D:D.....will the E620 magnify the image on the LCD when shooting just plain RAW files?
    My KM's won't.....I have to waste space and shoot R+Jpg
    THANX

    Good Luck
    "Genuine Fractals was, is and will always be the best solution for enlarging digital photos." ....Vincent Versace ... ... COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK ONLINE ... ... My Website

  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,962 moderator
    edited May 11, 2009
    I have been nursing my laptop along for 4 years. I do most of my work on a much more powerful desktop, but last night my laptop crashed and took 40 minutes to turn back on. It seems to be working fine today. Do you think it's on its last legs? How do I know if the hard drive is on the way out?

    If it's a Windows system, look in Start Menu->Administrative Options->Event Viewer and scan through the log for System Errors. Look at the properties of each error event and follow the links to Msft's Web site for a fuller explanation of the codes. You will probably see a pattern that can point you towards the source of the failure. I assume Macs have something similar, but I don't know how you find it.

    Another thing to do is run whatever hardware diagnostics the manufacturer supplied with the machine. After four years of service, memory or disk failures are the most likely problems, but are certainly not the only possibilities. The battery state can also be an issue on a laptop. If your disk is completely full, that can create lots of mischief, so check that as well. Virus or malware infections are also a possibility, but I would eliminate all possible hardware sources before worrying about those.
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