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[Richie London]

everything just froze, screen turned to black and white stripes, then went blue, had to pull plug out and battery. any ideas?
cheers

[iainb]

Blue screen of death  

[Markjay]

Could be...:

1. The internal flat-cable ribbon connecting the lid to the base unit

2. Problems with the integrated graphics adapter driver

3. Problems with the integrated graphics adapter hardware

4. Faulty memory or (less likely) faulty hard drive

Any others?

[Richie London]

my hard drive does seem to be playing up a bit lately, can it be replaced

[cem_devecioglu]

Hardware problem..mostly blue screens are memory or board problems..

[iainb]

Yes I did mine and paid £60 for an 80 gig hard drive.

[Richie London]

im just looking at this blue screen error video, see what its about
http://www.squidoo.com/Blue_Screen_of_Death

[Markjay]

my hard drive does seem to be playing up a bit lately, can it be replaced

Yep.... you will need to know if it is IDE (old laptop), also known as 'PATA', or it is SATA (new laptop).

Go to ebay or any online shop:

www.misco.co.uk
www.ebuyer.co.uk

etc etc

and order a 2.5-inch drive with the required capacity (e.g. 160gb).

You can get 4200rpm drives (cheaper but slower) or 5400rpm drives (faster but more exepnsive)

On the plus side, the ones you buy from eBay may contain some Home Office or MOD records....  

There are various kits that will allow you to copy the data from the old drive to the new one, though i recommend a fresh install of the OS.

[SheWhoMustNotBeOUTBID]

On a lappy, u can replace the HD and memory fairly easily.  Very little else can be replaced (like graphics card).  Other things like the screen can also be replaced but not as easy.

Most 2.5" hard drives will do, but u are better off feeding into google the model of Lappy u have and seeing what the spec says as to what HD will do.  I'd expect u to need an IDE Hard drive but if its a later model, u might need to get a SATA HD (just different connectors).

U might find, however, that a good clean of your HD will help.  Operating Systems usually get more and more dodgy with time until a reinstall is needed.

hope that helps.

[Richie London]

ive re installed quite a bit this yr, will save this post so i can refer to the information  youve put up.
thanks  

[Ken T]

Sling it. Its obviously more than 366 days old so is designed to fail then. Buy a new one !. Or alternatively I have a couple of good used HP laptops for sale !.

The black and white stripes, changing to BSOD suggests the screen is still OK. Without further diagnosis its hard to tell, however we are seeing more and more machines where the Northbridge BGA soldered joints fail and the machine hangs. Sometimes by squeezing in a certain area you can make it work, which proves the fault. This happens a lot on Sony's and Packard Bells, where some unscrupulous repair companies put a piece of cardboard under the BGA to push it into better contact. The long term solution is to "reflow" the BGA.

Not up to MarkDTM's manufacturing standards !

Ken

[Ken T]

The modern house is full of fluff. I had an acer with about 5mm of compressed fluff between the fan and heatsink (looked like felt). This meant the processor and general machine was getting no cooling, which killed the processor and one stick of ram. You can get a prog called "core temp" that will show you the actual processor temp, and if it gets near 100deg its tooooooooooooo hot. This will also wear out the hard drive. People tend to run laptops on their knees, blocking the air vents.

Ken

[Bandit127]

BSOD can also be caused by drivers. I would do a system restore to the point before you started having trouble before going down more expensive routes.

Also, if your laptop has a plug in floppy or CD/DVD drive - try removing it to see if there is a connection problem there. My work laptop BSOD'd on boot becuase the floppy drive unit was loose.