Laptop HDD possibly on its way out

[TheSlee]

Hi,

 

My laptop has been running fine for the past week, however, today when I tried to run a game on it, after a while the graphics mess up and I get blue, fuzzy blobs all over the screen, then when I exit the game, there are dotted lines down the screen. When I checked the HDD, it was quite hot. I am not sure what the problem is for sure, but I think that the HDD is on it's way out. Can anyone help?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Shut all programs down Slee and go into All Programs, Accessories and then Command Prompt.

 

At the flashing underscore type chkdsk

 

This will then indicate if you have any bad sectors on the hdd.

[TheSlee]

I defragged the disk, ran a chkdsk (with only 1 error being that some free space was being registered as 'allocated') this error was fixed. I then tried again and the same thing occured when I ran a game.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Run chkdsk again but this time with the F switch like so; chkdsk /f

 

If the problem happens again tell us your system specs ie; cpu, memory and gpu size.

[Dalo Harkin]

Sounds like the GPU rather than the HDD - if the lappy is getting too hot then thats what happens to the screen when a GPU is overheating.

[TheSlee]

well, I have a pentium 3.2 GHz processor (single core), 1 GB RAM and 256 MB dedicated graphics card and I did not get any errors when I used chkdsk /f. I thought that it may be the monitor, but I cannot test this theory as I cannot plug it in to an external monitor.

[Plastic Nev]

I tend to agree with Dalo that the graphics card (GPU) is overheating rather than there being a fault on your hard drive. Check all the fans are running, also that there is no dust clogging up the system, a Little difficult with a laptop I know but if there isn't enough air going round that could be all there is wrong. If you are going to remove covers, disconnect from any mains adapter and remove the battery before opening it up.