I have a four-year-old laptop, a Dell Inspiron 6000. It does all I want. Except when it crashes. It looks like the hard disk is failing. Should I just replace that or go for a new PC? A new disk, though cheaper, will be harder work, and might not turn out to be the problem anyway.
Mark Ottaway
It's often hard to decide whether it's worth repairing a PC, and it's often harder with laptops: they tend to take more knocks and are more vulnerable to overheating than desktop PCs.
You can replace the 2.5in IDE hard drive in an Inspiron 6000 for around £60-£120, for a certified drive, depending on the storage capacity. Reinstallation is simple if you have Dell's operating system disc, though you will have to reinstall your software. Of course, you will have to reinstall the same software and move the same data if you buy a new laptop for, say, £300-£500.
Try running HDD Health from panterasoft.com to see if it confirms that your hard drive is failing. If not, the problems may be with the motherboard, and this is relatively expensive to replace.
Backchat: Peter Johnson says: "If you try to replace the hard drive with a larger one you will come up against a limit Dell puts on the maximum hard drive size." This applies to systems pre-installed with MediaDirect versions 1 and 2, which have a "Host-Protected Area" (HPA) on the hard drive. However, Mark Ottaway reports that HDD Health says the drive is fine.
Update 1: Since the problem has not been solved by reinstalling Windows, and no viruses are found, it seems most likely to be a hardware problem. However, it could be as simple as fluff and dust, especially if the laptop has been used on a rug or similar surface. On the Ask Jack blog (below), prdt28 says: "Turn the laptop over and use a vacuum cleaner (on its minimum power setting) to remove dust from the case." In extreme cases, you may have to take the case apart and blow the dust away. Any small particles that short the pins of a chip, for example, can cause crashes. So can loose cable connections.
Update 2: Scott Hamilton says the idea of fluff and dust causing "shorts" is improbable but "the dust may of course affect cooling and the resulting overheating can cause failures. Your last sentence is more to the point. After more than 50 years working with electronic systems, my overriding experience is that cables and connectors are the primary sources of faults, and there are many hundreds of contacts involved, particularly with memory boards and with units peripheral to the motherboard. If Mark Ottaway feels confident, he can try at least wiggling all the cable connectors to see if this recovers a bad contact and stops the system crashing."
