Error in Windows bitmap

[star-warrior]

I think that's what the chkdsk scan threw up.

Is this the death knell of my WinXP laptop?

 

[Corny]

Or in case of a laptop .. letting it fall when running (or harddisk not in park-position) .. even from minor heights like a few cms on the table.

 

[star-warrior]

On a good day, it's taking about 7-9 minutes to fully boot and for anything I click on the desktop to start running.

 

[Corny]

On a good day, it's taking about 7-9 minutes to fully boot and for anything I click on the desktop to start running.

faulty harddrive controller or cache on the motherboard (if the system is also very slow in general)

 

[star-warrior]

I've still got five months on my extended warranty. At the time, I paid an extra £395 (almost $600) on top of the price. I wonder if faulty harddrive controller or cache on the motherboard can be covered by such a warranty. I've already gotten two mother boards, and a power pack out of it, so its been worth it

I've tried to do the reset to factory settings using the original disk provided, but it seems the dvd player is not reading the disk. I guess my four and a half yo laptop is dying.

 

[Corny]

quite a coincidence - i just had to deal with a laptop showing very similar problems at work. two things helped here:
go to your hardware manager, check the primary ide channel, check if your harddrive is running in PIO mode (SLOOOW it should be UDMA something), if it is - delete the primary ide channel, reboot.

go to your display properties (rightclick on desktop), advanced, trouble shooting (or so) and you should see a slider and a checkbox "write combining" if it is activated, deactivate it and see if it helps.

it did help with this laptop at work, and the laptop's owner practically is worshipping me now

 

[star-warrior]

Thanks Corny.

My laptop was already DMA, and it took a bit to find the 'write combining', but unchecking it doesn't seem to have improved anything.

Thanks for your help guys. I guess I'll just put up with it, as it give me time to make a cup of tea and have a biscuit, maybe get comfy before I can start using the old thing, lol.

 

[star-warrior]

Ok, forget about the 9 minute boot up.

I have AVAST! installed and each time I click to connect to my ISP, avast decides to check the servers for updates. All fine and well, you might say.

But tonight, it took 24 minutes to update and finally have the LED's stop flashing to show me its over. 24 fricking minutes. I have just begun reading The Earthsea Trilogy again.

Oh, the Sent and Recieved bytes were around 500 kb and 600 kb respectively, so I doubt it was anything major.