Hibernate Problem with Laptop?

[Asparagus]

I've had an Acer Aspire 8735 for 3 years or so (came with Win 7 installed). Put the machine in Hibernate mode for the first time the other night. Tried waking the machine up, it crashed, and it won't boot past the BIOS screen now (just keeps showing the Acer splash screen, shuts off, and then repeats this loop). Is it possible that Hibernating wrecked it? I don't hear the typical "click of death" indicating a HDD failure ...???

 

[MustISO]

Not likely that Hibernate caused the issue but the issues with Hibernate could have been caused by a drive failure or errors on the drive.

I would suggest using a boot CD/DVD and seeing if you can boot with it. You can also copy any data off of the drive using a Linux boot disc.

Once you have your data, run the drive diagnostic from whoever makes the drive. That will tell you if the drive failed.

 

[Asparagus]

Not likely that Hibernate caused the issue but the issues with Hibernate could have been caused by a drive failure or errors on the drive.

I would suggest using a boot CD/DVD and seeing if you can boot with it. You can also copy any data off of the drive using a Linux boot disc.

Once you have your data, run the drive diagnostic from whoever makes the drive. That will tell you if the drive failed.

Not looking good - alt F10 is giving me a disk read error.

I assume if the drive is toast, then I won't be able to get my data off with the Linux boot disc?

 

[Ketchup]

Not a good sign. Does the BIOS detect the drive at all?

See if another computer will read it.

 

[Asparagus]

It looks like the BIOS detects the drive. In the Information menu, it displays a name and serial number for IDE0. This same name also displays in the boot priority menu as the first drive to boot to. If the BIOS didn't detect the drive, would this information be blank?

 

[Ketchup]

The BIOS can read that a drive is there. Is the drive actually spinning?

I would still put the drive in another machine and see if it is readable.

 

[Asparagus]

Hmmm... Not sure I'd trust myself to put a Laptop HD into another PC to read it... If I get the Laptop going again with the original boot disk, assumption is I'm no further along... Or am I?

 

[Asparagus]

Okay,

I found the Win 7 backup/restore disk... I'm thinking my course of action is:

1) Purchase an IDE to USB Adapter and try to pull the data files down after hooking up to another Laptop with a good working HDD.

2) Skip the conversion and use the Win 7 backup disk to reinstall the OS... Then try to read the file again.

Most worried about losing a giant PST file for emails, if I do 2 instead of 1)

 

[Asparagus]

Ok... So right now I'm successfully pulling off my files from the HDD using an Apricorn IDE and SATA to USB Adapter... Neato... It appears the HDD files are still there so I'm copying them to another Laptop HDD.

Wondering where to go from here with the Acer... I really like it -- it's a good machine... I think it may simply be infected with a virus in the OS...

If so, I'm assuming I can Format the HDD using this Laptop and then reinstall it in the Acer and start over? Perhaps it will work at that point? Nto sure what to do... I suppose a MoBo or Vid Card could have crapped out but based on it's behavior before the lockup I think it was just infected with something that took it out.

Any thoughts on how to move forward to troubleshoot and save the Acer if possible?

 

[Ketchup]

With the hard drive removed, can you get into the BIOS on the Acer?

 

[Asparagus]

Never tried that... I got all the files off, put the drive back in, and was able to get into the bios to point it to a recovery disk... Trying to recover now... It says "Startup repeair is checking your system for problems -- if issues are found, it will fix them automatically". It been chugging this way for 1/2 hr so there must be an issue... If it doesn't recover soon, I'm probably just going to reinstall the OS and start from scratch... Thinking this was the result of a virus.

 

[mindless1]

Unlikely to be the result of a virus. Back in the old days a mischievous hacker might get a giggle out of keeping your machine from booting but these days corrupting the MBR to the point the system won't even boot is counterproductive in spreading a virus or harvesting your personal information.

You should mount the drive on a desktop SATA interface and run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics... after being sure you have salvaged all files you might need.

Odds are your drive is dying but still has a little life left in it. How much time you want to spend trying to keep using it vs wasting that time doing a recover and reinstall, and potentially losing data when it does fail, is up to you. There is a chance it could run for months or more but that doesn't seem likely, rather that it will continue to get worse.

To me this event has "time to upgrade to an SSD" written all over it.