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I have a Dell Vostro 2420 Laptop that has abruptly developed this weird problem: It will boot up, allow me to login and then hang / freeze.

Details:

  1. It successfully draws the desktop and starts some of the startup processes etc. So HDD seems ok
  2. More than a total hang it seems to have gotten abbysmaly slow. e.g. After 2-3 mins sometimes a double click will result into action
  3. The internal HDD light seems constantly on.

Any tips on debugging?

What I've established so far:

  1. Safe Mode does not help. That hangs too.
  2. Safe Mode with Command Line first seems to hang but left to itself for 10-15 mins falls successfully into the command line. The command line works fine. I can see all my files and I even copied critical data out to an external HDD. HDD Light does not stay constantly on in this command line mode.
  3. Ran Windows sfc (system file checker) successfully but it reported no integrity problems
  4. I installed a Fedora Live CD to a USB stick and changed the boot order to boot into Fedora Live. Works like a charm (but of course, that isn't using the HDD)
  5. BIOS shows my internal HDD as "ST500LM012". That sounds like a Seagate disk to me so I installed the "Seatools DOS" program to a bootable CD and tried booting that. Boots but Seatools reports no drive that it can debug.
  6. Had another pre-existing user account on this machine. Tried logging in via that. Same hang / freeze problem.

Now I'm stumped. What sort of problem does this look like? Any ideas?

What seem to be my options?

Ideally, I'd like to fix whatever specific is causing these problems because I've a ton of work programs installed on this Laptop and reinstalling all of those will be a PITA. Rolling back to a stable OS state from (say) a week ago would also do.

Suggestions?

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    IMO, it sounds like the hard drive might be acting up. You may want to run some hardware diagnostics. Press F12 on boot an choose diagnostics.
    – CharlieRB
    Feb 19, 2016 at 19:29
  • @CharlieRB Thanks. Will run the Dell Diagnostics and report back. Somehow I totally forgot about those. Feb 19, 2016 at 19:40
  • As @CharlieRB says, I once had the same symptoms on my notebook and it was the harddrive that had some bad sectors. Try running fdisk /f /r from a command prompt. In my case the problem didn't dissapear, but allowed me to copy the important stuff to a USB external drive.
    – martintama
    Feb 19, 2016 at 19:48
  • @martintama Thanks. Since I can as yet still boot to the command line and work is there a possibility of being able to clone the entire hdd out to a an external hdd? And then I could buy a new internal HDD and copy stuff back to it. Thus hoping to have a restored laptop without needing to re-install everything? Any tips on how to go about this cloning? Feb 19, 2016 at 19:51
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1 Answer 1

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IMO, it sounds like the hard drive is acting up. You should run some hardware diagnostics.

On your Dell you can run a Pre-boot System Assessment with onboard diagnostics

  1. Restarting the computer
  2. Press F12 at the Dell logo
  3. Choose diagnostics

Source - What Dell diagnostic tools can I use to fix hardware problems?

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  • Dell Diagnostics reports a Hard Drive error. Thanks for the tips. Feb 22, 2016 at 15:43
  • Any comments about this other question I raised related to this? From the chkdisk run that reported "The Master File Table's Bitmap Attribute is incorrect. The Volume Bitmap is incorrect." is it likely that this is a correctable, "soft" issue? Or do you feel the HDD is physically failing? superuser.com/questions/1043512/… Feb 22, 2016 at 15:45
  • Backup your data. Hard drives that are failing have a tendency to corrupt data. Although you may run a scan to fix the issue, it is likely to get corrupted again. In my experience, these lead to physical failure, if it isn't already. It is best to replace the drive.
    – CharlieRB
    Feb 22, 2016 at 17:07

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