New
#1
Laptop shut downs, possible hard drive issue?
Hello,
My laptop has begun shutting down. No over-heating, no blue screens, no reboot attempt. Just black screen, laptop is off. This was mostly occurring during playing a heavy full screen game but these are now occurring randomly as well.
It had been working fine until last Friday when I had the fans/vents cleaned at a computer repair shop. It came back blue screening and unable to reach the desktop. These blue screens spontaneously resolved by the next morning and I haven’t seen another once since.
I took the laptop back to make sure everything was reconnected correctly after the cleaning and these random shut downs then began to start during gameplay. I took the laptop to a second more trustworthy shop to again ensure everything was connected as it should be and to try to find the issue but they were not able to find the problem.
Having a look at the EventViewer I think the shut downs are related to these events as the times seem to coincide:
Level- Error,Source – atapi, Event ID – 11, Task – None, Category – The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1.
I tried to work out what my IdePort1 is. I went to: Device Manager > Expanded Disk Drives > Right Clicked my Hard Drive > Properties > Details Tab > Selecting "Physical Device Object Name" from the "Property" drop down menu gave me this value: \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP1T0L0-1
So am I right in assuming this error in the EventViewer is regarding my hard drive?
Assuming that the technicians between 2 repair shops aren’t entirely incompetent, the wires and hard drive are re-connected correctly so would this error indicate some sort of hard drive failure?
I’ve tried to google this error myself and took a look at some other threads here but find answers that don’t relate to my situation, or answers from people with multiple drives and or answers I just frankly couldn’t understand (I’m not very technical).
I have suspected hard drive failure for some time now and I’m just trying to find a way to confirm this is the issue before spending the time and money buying and setting up a new hard drive. I suspect drive failure because:
This issue only occurred after my laptop was opened and its components were manhandled.
My laptop originally had x2 500GB drives, the original failed some time last year and the one I currently work from was the second one. When it became my main drive I ran all SeaTools tests and they were all passed.
Currently, when I run SeaTools on this hard drive it passes S.M.A.R.T testing but fails long/short generic testing. I don’t know how to interpret that…
My hard drive is currently partitioned into a C and D drive. Filed stored on the D drive suddenly became inaccessible a few months ago causing windows explorer to stop responding, freezing and blue screening when attempting to open them. I’m certain there are bad clusters on the D partition but chkdsk fails to complete. It managed to find and fix some bad clusters but currently it results in getting stuck at a pitifully small number of files on stage 4 and usually blue screening so I have given up trying to fix this partition and simply stopped using it. I had thought maybe the bad clusters on this partition were causing the SeaTools tests to fail and that the hard drive might still be ok otherwise.
Chkdsk does complete on my C drive but I have found bad clusters on 2 separate occasions over the past 1.5-2months which makes me worry that they are appearing rapidly.
I guess I’m asking for opinions on whether this is hard drive failure or not, how I can confirm it or are there other causes for this error or other solutions I can attempt before buying a new hard drive?