So a friend of mine asked me to see what I could do to help out her laptop, and I think she overestimated my skillz, because I can't figure out what's wrong with it. First off, it's a Gateway (model #: W650I, if anyone's interested) with Windows Vista Home Premium. It's several years old, and she apparently bought it refurbished. I have removed viruses and other malware from it for her before. The thing starts up extremely slowly, hanging up on the loading screen that would precede the welcome screen for windows (she currently has it set to skip the welcome screen and go straight to her desktop). Starting up takes somewhere between 7 & 10 minutes. Once the desktop finally shows, the system is unresponsive. I can move the mouse cursor, but that's it. My best bet is that some essential system file somehow got corrupted or infected. I haven't ruled out hardware issues, however, as it is a rather old (and refurbished, to boot) notebook. Any ideas/suggestions?
With laptops it is especially important to update all the drivers and then the OS can update and fix crash bugs. Some drivers might need to be manually installed in order for the OS to know the manufacturer and version of the hardware in order to update them. Hope it helps a bit.
It being the drivers does make sense... but how can I update them with an unresponsive OS? Is there a way to do it while operating outside of Windows?
Sorry for late reply bud. Just hit F8 right after the BIOS has finished and you can choose <safe mode with networking> and use the manufacturers driver installer package to do the job. Remember it's quite important to restart the machine after each driver install as even in safe mode, when the drivers are not running, the registry needs refreshing.
As per your suggestion, I gave safe mode a shot, but there was no improvement in startup time, and even in safe mode, Windows is still non-responsive. Any other suggestions? I'm at a loss.
A test of the CMOS battery might be a good idea as it might be screwing up the startup. Do you know how to get into the BIOS and change the boot sequence to CD/DVD, insert a bootable disk then save and exit? Once you've done that you disconnect from the mains and remove the battery pack for at least 20 seconds to make sure the CMOS ROM is holding charge using the button cell. You can then replace the battery pack, reconnect the mains and either wait for the system startup to ask if you want to boot from the optical media or go into the BIOS and see if it held the change you made to the boot sequence.
Yeah, I can get into the BIOS and change the boot sequence, but I'm not sure I know how to make a bootable disk (She doesn't have a system restore disk or anything like that... stupid refurbs). I've always wanted to learn though, so if you guys could point me to where I could read up on it, I'd be very grateful. Just a few requests for clarification: By "disconnecting from the mains," do you mean simply unplugging the pc from the wall? What do you mean by the "button cell?" @ PureSilver She's not backed up, but it's not a big deal. She keeps all the stuff she wants to keep on another rig. And thanks a million for all the advice in the thread I made a while back. I'm really enjoying the new rig.
Button cell = just like in a normal pc, there is a small button cell battery that provides power to store the bios settings on the cmos chip ( or summat like dat ). If that battery goes dead then you lose any changes everytime you turn off the laptop essentially, and the bios reverts to default. NOt always a bad thing if a tweaker cocks up their bios settings, it has to be said.
Ah. I misread what he wrote. Thanks for clearing that up. Ok, so I changed a few BIOS settings, unplugged and de-battaried the thing, let it sit for about a minute, and turned it back on. The changes I made in the BIOS remained. This tells me that it's not the battery. Any other suggestions?
I would backup the data and reinstall the OS. This will take a couple hours instead of days. If the system will fail to install or it will still be unresponsive, then I think it is a hardware issue.
If she doesn't want to spend any money on reinstalling the OS (if you/she don't have the needed disk for a fresh start) try Ubuntu. It's great for basic programs like internet access, word docs, picture viewing....... and some advance one which I'm guessing she doesn't use
Startup in safe mode, get into MSconfig, disable any unneccesary startup programs. Also give it a good scan with malwarebytes antimalware as that can pick up some things that AVs can miss, give the drive a defrag and run check disc. All these things should improve performance but a fesh install of windows does sound like the best option though.
^^^ All good advice so far but it is a shame you haven't got the Vista intallation DVD(or even better a shiny new* Windows 7 installation disk to streamline the boot process). *I take no responsability for you downloading Windows 7 Ultimate through P2P(eg:uTorrent) with the HAZAR activation crack which needs to be installed on the Windows 7 allocated drive management partition with a newly allocated drive letter and path before activating Windows update and making any changes to the install for the perpose of testing the compatability of the hardware and software.
Can't you just pirate a Vista disc and then use the legitimate activation code that's on a sticker somewhere outside/inside the laptop? That way you can do the total reinstallation this machine quite clearly needs (that is, if it's a software problem).
If your struggling for a DVD im sure someone on here in US will pop a disc in the post for you. hell go to your local IT store and grab a disc. with MS its not really the disc you pay for its the license so you can use pretty much any disc you want providing its the right version
before you re-install windows, check the hdd and memory health first. find the make of the hdd and run the appropriate tool. run memtest86+ to check the ram if the machine has less than 2gb of ram suggest an upgrade. if both check out, then the easiest thing is an f&r. Gateway should be able to provide recovery cds (I don't recommend this). Its best to get a windows vista disc - any disc for the correct architecture (i.e. 32 bit or 64 bit depending on your licence, but assuming 32 bit) should have the content needed - eg a home prem disc can be used to install ultimate, business, home basic or home prem. just enter the licence key during install and the software will do the rest.
Sorry for the silence. RL has been taking up a lot of time lately. Thanks for all the advice, but please remember that the OS is completely unresponsive, so any diagnostic or repair work that would need to be done in windows can't happen. However, I was able to scrape up a Windows Vista restore disk, so I went ahead and attempted a reformat. Everything was going as planned until... Well, I decided to smack the "D" key anyways, just to see what would happen, and... I should note that the boot order in the BIOS starts off with a USB key, then the optical drive, then the HDD. Would this have an effect on the reformatting process? Or am I looking at a hosed HDD?
