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jrm213jrm213Flag for United States of America

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Toshiba Satellite Harman/Kardan- locks up 1 to 2 minutes after boot

I  am trying to fix for a friend a Toshiba Satellite that fell and is now acting weird. II got the chassis back in order but after It boots after a few minutes (between 1 and 5) it freezes up. By freezes up i mean that the mouse still moves around the screen but the keyboard or clicking the mouse has no effect. Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing, you have to hold the power button in to shut it down. Another oddity, it will boot into windows, but it will not boot into any version of safe mode.

I reseated the hard drive, and tried booting it with just either of the 2 memory modules in. It has 4GB of Ram in 2 modules. It is running Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit.

I am not sure what the problem is, I have loaded the ultimate boot disk and did a disk check and the machine runs knoppix with no problems(works fine and doesn't lock up). So I am not sure if when it fell it shutoff and screwed something up in the windows system or what. The only thing I haven't been able to do is use the disk that came with the computer (if one did) to try and repair the os files (they don't know where it is). I have been trying to find an ISO of that disk but haven't been able to find one.

Any suggestions or ideas are greatly appreciated. If you need any other info please let me know.
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lauchangkwang
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>>  I have loaded the ultimate boot disk and did a disk check and the machine runs knoppix with no problems(works fine and doesn't lock up).

Looks like the problem is cause bu the corrupted OS, can have a try to reinstall / reformat the OS , make a backup for the important files first ..... lets see how it goes after that .... :)
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nobus
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did u look at startup items
type msconfig in run window and select a diagnostic start up then restart and see if the computer locks up after this (if it doesn't then some startup item or service is locking up ur laptop
also run a temp utility(like coretemp) to check the cpu temp just in case it may be high
run a mem check utility to check if the ram is working as it should
although knoppix  runs fine it won't stress and use more system resources(ram ,cpu) like windows)

coretemp http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

The hard drive must have suffered some damage from the fall. I would run chkdsk /r to try to revive it.
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Absolutely, ALWAYS have your data backed up, even when there is nothing wrong with your computer.
Run chkdsk /r
I don't see anything wrong with running diagnostics to verify that there is a bad spot on your disk first., I just don't see the benefit.
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The computer starts and runs for several minutes. The file structure is not an issue.
I still don't see haw a diagnostic will do anything useful.
it will tell you the disk status. if you want more info, open a question please.
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Hi,

well, I believe it had run chkdsk itself on bootup once after I shut it down and it had "freed" some missing chains or something like that, but it didn't mention anything about bad sectors. I also had previously run one of the mem tests from the ultimate boot cd and it had not found any problems.

Unfortunately the diagnostic tools for the UBCD are unable to see the sata hard drive so I can't use that to run disk diagnostics or spyware/virus checks. I pulled the drive out and tried to slave it on my dell but the drive connectors are upside down in comparison and it is impossible to connect the drive without cutting off some of the plastic surrounding the connector which I don't want to do just yet.

So I am going to try to pretty much remove everything from msconfig startup and see if that helps, if not I will start disabling automatic services... I also downloaded the core temp program for 64 bit and will try to load it, it is difficult to get things installed as it freezes up so quickly after booting up.

Thanks for your suggestions.
Could someone please recommend a good hard drive diagnostic tool, preferably free? Also, preferably running from a dos or linux boot disk as I don't think it will have time to complete through windows...

I ran the core temp, and it seems fine it seems to range about 43-50 degrees celsius.
So I had just assumed that it was a toshiba hard drive as it was a toshiba laptop and in that initial link for diagnostic tools, toshiba was listed, but i took the drive out and looked and it is a Seagage ST9320423AS. So I downloaded SeaTools and downloaded the iso and booted to that. It is currently running its test but seems to be getting a whole lot of LBA errors. I am not sure what that means.

Results of SeaTools

Device 0 is Seagate Device ST9320423AS 5VJ0225E on Intel ICH8M-AHCI
Max Native Address 625142447
Device is 48 Bit Addressed - Number of LBAs 625142447 ( 320.073 GB)
This drive supports Security Features
SMART is Supported and Enabled
SMART Has NOT Been Tripped
DST Is Supported
Logging Feature Set is Supported
POH 799 Current Temp 31

It says:
Your SeaTools Test Code: 9AAB9C59
Please save this code if you are planning a warranty exchange. Seagate producty warranty status depends on...
...
Unfortunately, your seagate hard drive has failed an important diagnostic test, possible caused by problem sectors which are difficult to read. Now is a good time to make sure you have a current backup of your important data.

Seagate recommneds that you consider repairing the problem sectors. SeaTools for DOS may be able to save you from the Inconvenience and down time of exchanging the drive. For more information on this subject see our help topic 'Bad Sector Found'

Do you guys recommend trying to repair it? I really wish I had something I could slave it with. I have a contraption that takes a IDE drive and lets you connect it via USB, I might try to find a similar device for this SATA drive. Really makes me mad I can't put it in my dell.

I would replace it but if you want to repair it so that you can at least recover your data or continue using it, you can try this.
Go in the BIOS settings and set the SATA controller to compatable mode. It might be listed as ide, ata etc.
After doing that, you should be able to see it when you boot  UBCD. Then you can recover your data or try repairing it using chkdsk /r.
the ubcd diags are able to see Sata disks, so test it please.
hey - must be getting blinded by snow- completely missed your diag results.
since it mentions bad sectors, lets hope it's not damaged surface, because no soft can help - you must replace the drive then
but you can always run HDD Regenerator, to fix badly written sectors (more than 60% of bad disks) - free trial :
http://www.dposoft.net/
if it finds a bad sector, the trial will stop - but it will tell you if it has been repaired; if so, purchase it and run the whole disk !
It took about 3 hours to run the seatools "long test" and repair, and it seemed to repair everything, though everytime I run the short test it still says there is a problem at a specific LBA, but then the long test doesn't notice the problem...

In any case running the long test/repair of seatools seems to have taken care of the problem and I was able to boot into the os and not have it freeze up. I left all the startup stuff disabled because I really don't see the point in startup items other than antivirus, if they want to run other stuff my friend can re-enable it, but it logs in much faster now. I also ran Malwarbytes & Spybot S&D and removed some stuff but didn't seem to be anything serious on that front.

At work now, so will try running the dpsoft software when I get home tonight. Currently all seems well but I am recommending that my friend replace the drive when he gets a chance.

Thanks everyone for your help.
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Well the machine still seems to be working well, apparently the seatools did the trick. Thanks everyone for your help, so the bad hard drive sectors caused a couple of problems.

1. Computer freezes after bootup a few minutes after booting up.
2. Computer unable to boot into any safemode
3. Computer passes chkdsk scan but isn't working properly

So I am giving the machine back to my friend and telling him to replace the hard drive as soon as he can. I am going to award points to multiple individuals who pointed me in the right direction. Thanks all for your help.
It ended up being a hard drive problem, bad sectors or as seatools mentioned issues with LBA...

I am glad I didn't run chkdsk /r as it appears a lot of people said it was a bad idea. Using the seatools software which was the software from the hard drive manufacturer worked well, so I would say before doing chkdsk, use diagnostic software from whoever makes your harddrive is a good rule of thumb.
i would still run HDD regenerator over the drive -  you may be surprised !