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I have a 6 year-old laptop which broke down last year. So here are the details:

1. 1 year prior, it crashed (blue screen) and took about 1 day to reboot with disc checking and all. Something about bad cluster. After that, the laptop worked as usual again.

2. When it broke down again a year later, it took me about 7 days to reach 93% disc check when it stuck there forever.

3. Restarting disc check was pointless as the disc check was horribly slow and stuck again after 7-10 days with ~90% completion.

4. The internal fan pretty much stopped functioning way before the first serious crash, and I'd been relying on my table fan to cool it.

Now, the thing is...

I'm not sure if I should throw the computer away as garbage, because I think that some fix can get it running again and I can use that laptop as a spare computer for various small uses. But I'm not exactly sure where to fix in this case.

For now, I'm just keeping it for spare parts.

Is it just my HDD's fault that I can no longer boot my computer, or the whole system's? Opening the laptop, I see a little burn mark around the fan (very little black mark).

I've been thinking of taking the laptop to a repair centre, but that'd be expensive and may not worth it considering the value of that laptop now. The specs are pretty ancient by now. And the display screen is already slightly yellowish. Even if I decide to send it there, it would still be good if I know what to ask of the repairmen.

Anyone who's involved in computer repair business? I'd really appreciate your help.

People bring in computers like yours to my store all the time. I can't speak for where you are, but the repair you'd be looking at would not be worth your time and effort. The best thing you can do is to buy a new laptop and get any essential data off of the old laptop's drive.

That is, assuming the old laptop's drive even works. Your problem sounds like it's a major hard drive failure, coupled with other aging components which may or may not work after the HDD is replaced and re-imaged.

In my honest opinion, it is not worth throwing money at that piece of crap. Keep in mind that the components are all ancient, so the parts you might be able to still find will cost as much as significantly better modern components. Don't spend money fixing the old PC. Get a new one and just invest in data recovery for the old hard drive.

Then I shall just keep it as an artifact. Lol.

I already have a new laptop now and that old one is stored under my bed collecting dust. >.<

Thanks for the advice.

Sounds like a HDD failure. If you can buy a HDD locally just give it a shot, if it still doesn't fix it you can return it.

The problem there is that HDD is guaranteed to be one of the old laptop IDE drives. I dunno about where he is but where I am those are rare and good luck returning it after it's been used.

It's 'Ultra DMA/100'. I suppose that's IDE? Given its rarity, I suppose that'll cost a real lot.

I highly doubt I can 'borrow' a HDD to experiment like that. Things don't work that way in my country. Either you buy it, or you don't. And they'll never refund money.

This post has been edited by Saint on Apr 25 2011, 01:32 AM

UltraDMA is an IDE specification. If it's 100 and not 133, that means it's VERY old. I wouldn't recommend trying.

If you post the model of said laptop we can do a quick search online and see whether or not a new drive will actually be worth it. You may also be able to get a tech to do a clone of the drive to the new one so that you can be up and running within a short time.

Once you saw an error about bad clusters though that was an indication of the drive going bad.

I suggest you get a tech to disassemble and clean out the fan/fins of the heat spreader so that you can get a little more life out of the lappy as well. Also change the thermal paste.