# Replaced hard drive - still slow computer.



## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

I've posted about this in the HP forums but I'm looking for more responses/help. Only got reply from 1 person over there.

Computer info: HP HDX16 1375DX - Laptop

First, my computer was running very slow, so slow that everything became unresponsive. The hard drive light was "busy" always yet my CPU usage was fine and no processes were causing it to do this. Starting up my computer took a good 8-10 min.

I restarted my computer thinking it'd fix itself but I get the error "Windows has failed to start. A recent hard ware or software change..." I attempt to repair using various repair methods I've seen, CD, the option at start up, etc.... It always comes back with "It could not be repaired automatically, send to Windows.... etc" Again, starting up took 8-10 min and sometimes it would restart itself to the beginning.

Me & boyfriend became convinced it's hard drive failure since his laptop he bought only 5 months after mine experienced hard drive failure (experiencing the same SLOW symptoms & errors) but he was covered under BestBuy warranty. I did not purchase it..

I bought a new hard drive Amazon.com: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive: Electronics 

and then use my WIndows 7 Upgrade CD and installed Windows 7 unto the brand new hard drive. 

The computer works PERFECTLY and runs amazingly fast for the whole day/night.

I then wake up the next morning and I am stunned to find my computer is having the symptoms of what the old hard drive had yet again. It ran SO SLOW and eventually became unresponsive. 

After restarting the computer, the error came again "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or...." Again, all start up repairs come up with nothing saying "Could not be fixed automatically. Send more info to Windows."

Now, everytime I start my laptop it takes a good 8-10 min to get to my desktop. To get to the WIndows login screen takes about 5 min alone. The "busy light" stops being 100% on at about 10 min. after the laptop loads my desktop. After about 20 min of being on the computer & being FREE from the sloth-like experience, the "busy light" comes back and never goes away until I have to restart and do the cycle all over again.

The point:
I've completely replaced a hard drive and STILL have the same problems. What else can I do? What is going on?


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## epshatto (Dec 23, 2010)

My two cents - I suspect a failure on the motherboard, possibly the controller.

The steps you took seem to be correct, going through the repair options, running a diagnostic on the HDD or just outright replacing it, and reinstalling Windows. 

Since the problem reoccurs even with a new hard drive, and even in a new Windows install, I would think motherboard next.


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## Wand3r3r (Sep 17, 2010)

You should always run the drive manufacturers diagnotics before replacing a hard drive. This way you know for sure.

You don't mention hardware specs like how much memory the laptop has.

Are you still under the warranty period?


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

I bought the laptop more than two years ago. Should be about 2 years and about a month right about now. That means I'm not under warranty with HP right? I'm guessing a company's standard warranty for their products is usually a year....

I didn't purchase any warranty from Bestbuy or anything like that. How can I give you hardware specs? I gave the name of the laptop HP HDX1375XD. Is this enough info?

This is what it came with when I bought it:
Microprocessor	2.26 GHz Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology featuring Intel Core2 Duo Processor P7550
Microprocessor Cache	3 MB L2 Cache
Memory	4GB
Memory Max	8192MB
Video Graphics	Nvidia GeForce GT 130M
Video Memory	Up to 2815MB (1024MB dedicated)
Hard Drive	500GB (5400RPM)

That was my old hard drive up until I replaced it like 2 days ago.

http://amzn.com/B004I9J5OG That is the new hard drive I bought. (Didn't notice my link sucked up there. Sorry, am new here)

I did lots of the diagnostic tests (The ones that come up after you press F8 or F2 w/e the function key was I forgot. It was basically an all black screen with white text) There were like 4 different tests I could do. I did start up test... Memory Test and Hard drive test.

When I had my OLD hard drive (three days ago) the hard drive test kept coming back with "Replace Hard Disk 1" I didn't know what this meant too much but I figured it meant the hard drive was bad. IT then would just restart automatically and keep giving me "Windows has failed to start. A recent hardware or software change..." error.

If I restarted enough times... and was patient through the 5 min of black screens and the Windows symbol... It would FINALLY get to the windows login screen but, again, loading my desktop took ages and took maybe 10 - 15 min more for the "busy light" just to stop being 100% on.


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

Motherboard is the next suspect then... So, what does that mean exactly? In terms how how "fixable" is the motherboard. Isn't the motherboard like the heart of the computer or something? And cost...I suspect that must cost a bit of money. 

Like I said I'm no computer genius but the hard drive was very easy to install myself but I worry, that possibly, the motherboard must be a little more or a lot more difficult to replace ( on your own )?

And, who can fix this? HP? A computer tech? My only options I see is going to BestBuy and paying those Geeksquard people like $70 to do their diagnostic on my computer but then who knows how much it will cost to fix my computer when they figure out the problem.

Thanks for you help thus far, btw. Thanks much. I just really want this computer fixed asap. I need so much for my classes.


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## Maroman68 (Apr 14, 2011)

Motherboards for most newer hp's that I have seen are at least a couple hundred dollars. Yours being a couple years old however, may be an advantage as far as cost. The only thing I could recommend is go looking online using the model of the computer to find your motherboard. Keep in mind the cost of having it installed will more that likely be high as well. But did you buy another warranty from HP? They offer protection plans and things for their machines that cover things like this if you did.


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## Wand3r3r (Sep 17, 2010)

bustachaina the specs you posted is the model standards and that doesn't mean that is what you bought.

Go to System in control panel or right mouse click on My Computer and go to properties. What is listed for ram/memory?

Being a laptop you do not want to be replacing the mainboard yourself. Even experience techs need to be trained to do this right.

If speed is of the essence you need to take it to a computer shop experienced in diagnosing and replacing HP laptop mainboards [specifically ask them this question]


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## epshatto (Dec 23, 2010)

Wand3r3r is absolutely correct. I wouldn't advise replacing a motherboard in a PC if you don't have training/experience, trying to replace it in a laptop is a recipe for a very bad day. It can be very difficult. You should take it to a shop if you want to replace the motherboard.


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

Yeah, I was very confident when I posted those specs that I copied from the HP website because I have looked at my specs many, many, many times over the course of my two years owning it for various reasons. (I've been posting on my b/f's laptop while at university so I -had- to look it up then)

I'm back home now and using my laptop but I knew I could safely post those specs without worrying that it contrasts from my laptop because I've always memorized those basic ones in my head, haha. xD Yeah, I have 4GB memory.

Thanks for everyone's inputs so far . I guess I will just have to take it to Bestbuy and see what they can do for me. 

But to answer your question, Maroman, I never bought any kind of warranty from anyone. I didn't even know you could "purchase" warranty from HP. I thought only Bestbuy did that stuff. I thought HP just had a standard 1 year warranty for their products, but not that you could buy "extra" warranty stuff. 

I'll just start looking for a tech to fix this for me :sigh:


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

One last question. Can HP fix this for me or no? I'm thinking there's no better place to send it than the people who made the computer instead of some random computer shop here where I live or BestBuy's Geeksquad. I'm willing to pay the cost to replace the motherboard I just want to be confident in the people who I give my computer to is all.

Like I said, I've got no warranty from Bestbuy and never knew I could "buy" warranty from HP. So, being that my computer is 2 years old, it's too late to go to HP, right?


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## Maroman68 (Apr 14, 2011)

for warranty I believe so all depends on what originally came as a warranty. Some are more than a year so not sure about your specific computer. As far as them fixing it, yes they would be able to not sure on how much they would charge compared to another shop though.


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## KhaleTech (Jun 29, 2009)

IMHO you should buy a new laptop. I know it may not make financial sense depending on your particular situation but you will end up paying half the cost of a new laptop to a) take it to a local computer shop to purchase and replace the motherboard or b)extend your factory warranty so that HP will replace it for you.

Dell - Inspiron Laptop / AMD Athlon&#153; II X2 Processor / 15.6" Display / 4GB Memory - Obsidian Black - IM5030-1723OBK

A dell laptop from Best Buy (I actually own this laptop) and it works great. Mine has an Intel CPU though and I bought it directly through Dell last christmas so it may be within a model # or two but basically the same guts and design.

You could easily even pay that much ($379.99) to get your current laptop fixed.

If this is the right motherboard (HP HDX16 Laptop Intel Motherboard 519220-001 | eBay) I've purchased parts on Ebay before and usually they are the cheapest if you're willing to take the risk. @ $165 you are already almost half-way there and you don't even have the labor involved in having a technician replace it. I worked for a guy once and it could easily cost a minimum of $100 to replace the motherboard. Plus, there's still a chance that this doesn't fix the issue (e.g. the CPU is actually fried/failing or the RAM is). Where if you buy a new laptop you can have the factory (and an extended warranty if you choose) and practically a guarantee that it will run for 1 or 2 years (during the warranty period).

Good Luck!


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

KhaleTech said:


> IMHO you should buy a new laptop. I know it may not make financial sense depending on your particular situation but you will end up paying half the cost of a new laptop to a) take it to a local computer shop to purchase and replace the motherboard or b)extend your factory warranty so that HP will replace it for you.
> 
> Dell - Inspiron Laptop / AMD Athlon™ II X2 Processor / 15.6" Display / 4GB Memory - Obsidian Black - IM5030-1723OBK
> 
> ...


Thanks so much for your reply. What is funny is yesterday I was pretty much bawling my eyes out of of frustration... I need a laptop desperately and I really have a lot of expenses as of late (many different doctor/dentist appts. and more I was PLANNING on doing but it has to hold off now)

So, it's been very stressful. I also have projects I have to do for my university classes & it stresses me out to borrow my boyfriend's laptop which he needs as well. 

Last night, I gave up. Thinking of the cost of replacing my motherboard and then thinking of the labor... I've already spent $101 for replacing the hard drive, thinking that was the problem. That's 1/10 of what I originally paid for when I bought this laptop at Bestbuy 2 years ago.

I imagined replacing the motherboard...Which I remember I searched for a couple days ago and saw it costs like $150-170. Plus WHO KNOWS the labor costs at computer shops. Plus the big WHAT IF: What if through all the hassle of replacing hard drive and motherboard it still isn't fixed...

I made up my mind and last night went looking at laptops at BestBuy. They were awful specs, imo. Me and my boyfriend are gamers at heart so I was looking for a good gaming laptop at a decent price.

Everytime you buy a laptop there's a better one that comes out in 6-8 months time for pretty much the same price you originally bought yours.

So, these laptops I see nowadays are ridiculously cheap with equal if not BETTER specs than your original laptop.

I was doing some crazy research all last night. Found out most Bestbuy computers come with gimped GPU's. So like this one for example:

Asus - Factory-Refurbished Laptop / Intel® Core™ i7 Processor / 17.3" Display - Black - G73SWRF-BST6

It has NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M but it's actually the gimped 128 bit instead of the standard 192 bit...

Found this thread talking about it. 

G73sw or G73jh refurbished?

This guy was looking at the same exact laptop I was looking at. Then I kept googling all night about various different things and I'm wondering whether to get that laptop or not. I've never considered refurbished before but I want to save money and that's an amazing deal.

If whatever broke the laptop in the first place got fixed (refurbished) then why not? I'm new to all of this, again, but I sit down and read for hours and hours many different forums and notebookcheck.net it and I may not understand every utter thing that is being said but I piece things together, soak up the info, and attempt to learn it. 

Just weighing my options right now. Definitely, I have to replace my laptop. Took a bit to convince my boyfriend because he doesn't like me being "frivolous" with my spending but I had to sit down and tell him that repairing this laptop could cost as much as getting a new one...

Sorry for long post.


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## epshatto (Dec 23, 2010)

It can make financial sense to simply replace a laptop when the motherboard fails. You're correct that replacing the motherboard can cost as much or nearly so as a whole new laptop.

There are laptops out there for gaming, but they're quite expensive. I'm not sure you'll find one geared toward the gamer crowd that's within your price range.

If you use the laptop for schoolwork, you might want to consider buying a cheaper, basic notebook for that, and saving up to invest in a gamer-type PC.

I know the expense of buying both is pretty significant, you'd have to price-check what it would be. Also it would depend on whether it's feasible to split the cost of the PC with your b/f and share it, I don't know what your living situation is. So just a thought.


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## KhaleTech (Jun 29, 2009)

A little off-topic but not too far...

Me and my (gf at the time, now wife) got a cell plan together and I bought both of us (actually it cost $0) LG CF360 phones which were refurbished. The brand-new ones were like $10 but my wife and I are very determined to not overspend but not be scrooges either. Both of those phones worked great until I lost mine and decided I wanted an iPhone, my wife wanted one too then. So I bought two iPhone 3GS's for..... $20 each. Yes, these too were refurbished as opposed to paying $50 each for a new one (w/2yr contracts of course). A few months later my wife's mother wanted a cellphone and my wife's father already had his cellphone on my plan so we put another one on the plan for her mother. Guess what she got? My wife's old LG CF360 and it still works great.

I've never purchased a PC that was refurbished but I find a refurbished PC to be nothing more than a repaired PC. If you take a computer to a tech-shop and have some sort of repair done to it, it's nothing different than a refurbished PC now (except refurbs usually have a warrantly, 30,60, or 90 days... sometimes).

As I've described though, I've got 2 refurbished iPhones and another refurbished LG phone and minus the minor quarks that probably existed in the brand-new one's they work great.

I hope this gives you some perspective on refurbished laptops. IMHO if I were to buy another laptop, I'd probably get a refurbished one (depending on what I needed it to do) but if the cost/vs not having a warranty comes in to play, a new one would probably win-out.

Good Luck!

~KHaleTech


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## bustachaina (Oct 13, 2011)

KhaleTech said:


> A little off-topic but not too far...
> 
> Me and my (gf at the time, now wife) got a cell plan together and I bought both of us (actually it cost $0) LG CF360 phones which were refurbished. The brand-new ones were like $10 but my wife and I are very determined to not overspend but not be scrooges either. Both of those phones worked great until I lost mine and decided I wanted an iPhone, my wife wanted one too then. So I bought two iPhone 3GS's for..... $20 each. Yes, these too were refurbished as opposed to paying $50 each for a new one (w/2yr contracts of course). A few months later my wife's mother wanted a cellphone and my wife's father already had his cellphone on my plan so we put another one on the plan for her mother. Guess what she got? My wife's old LG CF360 and it still works great.
> 
> ...


THanks a lot for your reply. I've never bought a refurbished anything in my life. I usually tend to like things brand new because my mind tells me they're most reliable being "brand spanking new" but I've also owned a lot of things that have just failed me too soon for the money to be worth it. 

It was a huge gamble to actually even -consider- getting something as big as a laptop refurbished but again money is an issue. I get my laptop tomorrow. 

I'm trying to be optimistic and NOT think that something will be wrong w/ this new laptop but negative thoughts sneak in my head. I'll prolly come back and say how it's going after maybe a week of having the laptop.

Funny new bit of info: The brand new hard drive I bought to replace my old hard drive in the -now- dead laptop is now having issues. At startup it immediately says "The SMART hard disk check has detected an imminent failure. To ensure no data loss, please backup the content immediately and run the Hard Disk Test in System Diagnostics."

So, I guess the brand new hard drive, that I got just days ago, is now ruined. First my old hard drive died... And then something I just literally paid $100 for has "imminent failure." Something is telling me that there is -something- in my computer that is ruining my hard drives and getting Amazon to replace it, won't fix the issue. I have to return the hard drive to Amazon & get a refund. 

Just a big string of bad luck that I hope ends tomorrow. Here's to hoping for a bit of GOOD luck starting tomorrow... Cheers.


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## KhaleTech (Jun 29, 2009)

Sorry to hear that but there could still be the chance that it is just the laptop having issues communicating with the hard drive (the hard drive controller). If you are going to get it refunded then I wouldn't worry about doing any testing but if you'd planned on keeping it or were forced to keep it based on policies or what-not with Amazon i'd try some hard drive tests on it. That is, if it were my hard drive, and I couldn't get money back for it. In order for you to test it (because i'm guessing you don't have a USB adapter for SATA/IDE/LaptopIDE with which you could connect to this or another computer to run stress tests on it.

Anyways... If you're curious to hear more about that let me know, otherwise I don't want to overload you with more information than you care to know at this time as I can gather that you're under stress as it is.

Good Luck!

~KHaleTech


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