Missing operating system on laptop

matphil

Thanks. after reading the screen I just tried that.
I saved the changes and exited. It then re-booted and started running the disk. I clicked to check hard drive. After about 30 seconds of running the computer shut down.
The fan has been running almost constantly since I put the computer on could this be one of the problems.
Thanks.

Hkem

The fan should be running most of the time on a laptop, because they have trouble dissipating heat, so I shouldn't worry about that. It sounds like your HDD is knackered if the diagnostic completely fails on it without even an error message.

matphil

I just started it again and it is running at the moment it looks about a quarter of the way through test 1 of 2.
The laptop always used to shut down quite regularly when it got too hot.
Thanks.

It just shut off again before completing the test.

fwor

That's not quite conclusive, eh? To eliminate overheating as a cause, probably best to shut it off, leave it to get completely cold and then boot up and run the HDD test.

Incidentally, the BIOS may have a facility to let you monitor the CPU temperature and set the temp at which a shutdown is forced. May be worth looking at those settings for signs of overheating. Laptops (particularly of that sort of age) generally do get quite hot under normal conditions.

Conor_3

matphil wrote: »

Thanks both.
The Os was probably not fully patched as I have never patched it.

Cheers mate. Love getting hundreds of SPAM e-mails and having the internet run at a crawl from the sheer amount of traffic that unpatched and p0wned PCs create.

matphil

fwor wrote: »

That's not quite conclusive, eh? To eliminate overheating as a cause, probably best to shut it off, leave it to get completely cold and then boot up and run the HDD test.

Incidentally, the BIOS may have a facility to let you monitor the CPU temperature and set the temp at which a shutdown is forced. May be worth looking at those settings for signs of overheating. Laptops (particularly of that sort of age) generally do get quite hot under normal conditions.

I just tried doing a short test and it ran that one and it said that the hard drive was ok. Is it still worth trying to do a long test.
I have now tried a memory test and it doesn't seem to be doing anything, it says at the top of the screen Memtest86+ v1.70.
Thanks.

fwor

Conor wrote: »

Cheers mate. Love getting hundreds of SPAM e-mails and having the internet run at a crawl from the sheer amount of traffic that unpatched and p0wned PCs create.

Thanks - that was something I meant to get around to mentioning, but didn't.

Like Conor says, if your OS wasn't patched there is very little chance that it wasn't infected with malware. Many people seem to think that if they have AntiVirus s/w they are Ok - not so. There are a number of vulnerabilities in Windows that, if not patched, cannot be stopped with AV (for example because of the way that IE is built into Windows).

matphil

Conor wrote: »

Cheers mate. Love getting hundreds of SPAM e-mails and having the internet run at a crawl from the sheer amount of traffic that unpatched and p0wned PCs create.

I don't know what you mean by this, why would my un-patched computer affect anyone else's.
I don't know much about computers and don't know what a patch is or how to do it. Any help is always appreciated.

fwor

matphil wrote: »

I just tried doing a short test and it ran that one and it said that the hard drive was ok. Is it still worth trying to do a long test.
I have now tried a memory test and it doesn't seem to be doing anything, it says at the top of the screen Memtest86+ v1.70.
Thanks.

The latter is very odd. I've never had Memtest fail to run on any PC.

It could be a memory failure, or it may be that the memory needs reseating in it's slot. Might be worth checking that out. Remember to power off and remove the battery before opening it up!

fwor

matphil wrote: »

I don't know what you mean by this, why would my un-patched computer affect anyone else's.
I don't know much about computers and don't know what a patch is or how to do it. Any help is always appreciated.

It's a bit of an unnecessary distraction right now - if the HDD or memory is knacked then it's a bit academic!

Conor's comment is because if you're PC is 0wned, it will often be used to do things in the background, such as spamming and DOS attacks, which use up huge amounts of bandwidth without you knowing.