I'm just hoping to get a bit of advice here. I have a friend's laptop (Acer Aspire 1640Z) that I said I'd sort out for him - it's around 3 or 4 years old, and he'd been complaining that things were starting to become very sluggish, even after defrags, tune-ups etc. So I said I'd reinstall XP for him, and he was happy enough for me to do this.
On the first install attempt, the keyboard was working - I was able to hit 'Enter' etc whilst going through the set-up menu - but when Windows asks for a username, the keyboard wouldn't work. This was something which he said happened every now and again (whilst in Windows). I restarted, let the set-up process restart itself, and then the keyboard worked fine. Even after an apparently successful install, there were again times when the laptop would seem to decide on its own whether the keyboard would work or not! Other odd problems were not being able to view Device Manger by right clicking on my computer, properties and so on - I had to go into control panel. It would also hang just after choosing shutdown from the start menu, and would often require a hard power-down. Also, driver installation would apparently not complete, and would hang during the process.
I knew it was nothing I had done with the machine, yet I felt bad as I'd told him all would be well after reinstalling... So, I decided to run a few checks. After running Memtest for about 7 or so hours, it returned no errors. I downloaded SeaTools for Windows, to run diagnostic checks on the Seagate HDD - and 2 of the longer tests failed. SeaTools itself suggested 'SeaTools for DOS', which I downloaded and ran - it also has an option to repair any bad sectors it finds (one, in this case). So after repairing the sector, it ran the test again, which it passed. My next step was then to wipe and format the drive again, and install XP. Things had been looking better after having done this, but it's playing up again as described before. Installing any software seems to hang. I'm also getting 'not responding' errors when trying to shutdown, from 'Power Meter' and 'ZcfgSvc.exe'. Even when the machine is powered through the wall socket, and not through the battery, the screen is sometimes pretty dark too, as if it's in power saving mode or something.
I would hate to be the bearer of bad news if I had to tell him his laptop was ready for the graveyard... any ideas? Thanks for reading.
