Laptop seems to be dying a slow and noisy death. Can anyone help?

[stavroshamster]

Hi Everyone,

I use a Dell Inspiron Laptop for my Uni work. For the last couple of days it has been crashing with an extremely loud continuous 'system' beep and the only way to shut it up is to hold down the power button and shut it off. A couple of times I have also got a BSOD without the beep.

I have managed to back up everything I need and have been running a couple of tests on the hard disk including HDTune which says everything is OK in the 'Health' check. I have also run CHKDSK on windows startup which came up with a few errors. I have also defragged.

Interestingly, the problem seems to occur most commonly when I am using Internet explorer or Google Chrome to browse the internet (just normal sites like hexus/gmail/bbc). The browser will lock up, followed by windows explorer, then I will get the beep.

Any ideas for things I can try before I hand it over to the university computing service? - I am keen to avoid this if possible as I could do with it over Christmas.

Thanks!

[dirky]

Have you run the dell diag on it?

[Phage]

How old is it ? Could it be a buildup of cruft making it get too hot ? What shape is the battery in ?

As Dirky siad, what did the Dell software say ? If nothing, I'd check temps, clean the heatsink and re-install.

[stavroshamster]

Tried to run Dell Diagnostics on it. It ran the Pre-Boot System Assessment okay and all the checks passed, then it said it was going to open the diagnostics partition, but instead it just ran windows. Tried again and the same thing happened. I can't run Dell Diag off the utilities cd either as I think the university have it.

I have also taken the laptop apart (it's 3 years old) to see if it was clogged up with dust, but it was surprisingly clean.

The battery has been replaced <1 year ago, so that should be fine.

Just loaded up SpeedFan and it reckons that the CPU is running at 65-70C when idle. This seems more than a little hot to me!

Edit: Hmm, on second thoughts maybe its not too hot. Been running the processors at 100%, the fan kicks in and they dont get much above 70C. It's not crashed under load either.

[dirky]

Probably means the dell partition has been nuked, if you punch in the dell service tag to http://support.dell.com then you might be able to download an iso? (not sure..)

Edit: you can get the service tag from 1) the bios or 2) underneath the laptop on the white sticker

[ferfery]

You could have a corrupt file in IE cash or some component of IE, like Flashplayer corrupted.

[handscombmp]

you tried running a linux live disk on it and seeing if it's ok

[stavroshamster]

Managed to get an ISO of the dell diagnostics to work.
Its now running a full system test, nothing wrong so far though.

You could have a corrupt file in IE cash or some component of IE, like Flashplayer corrupted.

Would this affect Google Chrome too though?

[SoCalAdam]

Long continous beep is usually an indication of bad memory or an impending SMART failure.

Do a hard drive check if you have not changed the memory recently. (Assuming SMART is enabled).

Could also be an overheating problem, make sure to get rid of ALL the dust bunnies from the fan area.

-SCA

[k4p84]

You say you have backed everything up, good lad, then you may as well do a fresh install.

Windows get corrupted and can cause issues.

You can run a repair, boot from the OS disk and select repair. This can get you up and running but it does not seem to permanently resolve the issue.

There are also good tools on the OS disk for fixing some HDD errors like bot sector issues. Though I would not suspect this as you should not be able to boot to windows.

If the HDD sounds ok, no audible clicking / rattling / been too noisy then I would goo with a file been corrupted.

It is also possible that you have a virus or two that can cause similar issues.

So format the disk properly, put it in a caddy and use diskpart or boot and nuke it then do a lovely fresh windows install.

Though remember to make it easy Dell saves all your drivers in a folder called, well Drivers. Saves hunting them down again.

Regards

Ed