Member Avatar for yeti

Hello,

New member!

I hava a Sony VAIO - PCG-7D2L

Intel Pentium M 740
Processor 1.73GHz
504MB RAM
XP Home Edition

CPUID #'s

No motherboard listed
Chipset: Intel i915GMS/i910GML Rev. 03
Southbridge: Intel 82801FBM(ICH6-M)

BIOS: Phoenix Tech LTD.
Ver: R0080J1

Well this belongs to my niece and she dropped it! I know, kids what can you say. Well after she dropped it, it ran fine for a month then all of a sudden it moved very slow. Sony won't touch it w/ a ten foot pole!

When you turn it on it takes forever to load, the Windows XP screeen runs for about 2 mins. Then it loads a black screen for another min. then the desktop opens and spends another min before it makes the Windows sound. When you open anything it takes 30 or more seconds to open ex; My Computer.

I've checked the memory cards they both seem to be working. I'm not sure if this is the motherboard or what.

Any help or suggestions would be great!

Thanks again!

Yeti

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Chaky

Dani AI

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Building on 's description and 's troubleshooting direction, this should be treated as a hardware-first problem given the drop and the persistence after software checks. The priority is: protect data, verify the drive's health, and isolate the OS from the hardware. Work from least-invasive checks to opening the case.

First, back up irreplaceable files now to an external USB stick or drive. Then gather two quick indicators from Windows before doing anything physical: the drive's SMART status and a surface/repair scan. From a command prompt run:

wmic diskdrive get model,status
chkdsk C: /r
sfc /scannow

wmic gives a simple SMART-like status (OK / Pred Fail on many systems). chkdsk C: /r finds and attempts to repair bad sectors (it will ask to schedule on next boot and can take hours). sfc /scannow checks system files if you still suspect Windows corruption.

Next, isolate hardware: boot the machine from an external environment (a Linux live CD/USB or Windows PE) and run it for a while. If the system is snappy from external media, Windows or the disk may be the problem. If it is still slow, listen for clicking or long seek noises from the drive, and note any unusually high heat. Try removing/reseating the hard drive and memory modules (test with one RAM stick at a time in different slots) and, if possible, connect the HDD in an external USB enclosure on another machine to measure real transfer speed.

If SMART reports failure or chkdsk finds many bad sectors, replace the drive and restore the backup. If a healthy replacement still behaves slowly, suspect the drive controller/motherboard damage from the drop — at that point professional repair is reasonable. Post the wmic output and any chkdsk messages and they can be read to help pinpoint the next step.

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Member Avatar for yeti

anybody know how to check if this is a motherboard issue w/o having to tear apart the notebook?

Member Avatar for Chaky

Such extreme slow-down can be caused by number of things:

- underclocked CPU
- lack of free HD space (almost no HD space)
- viruses, trojans, adware, spywarwe...
- HD issues (dying HD, bad cable connections...) a.k.a. PC having hard time accessing and writing to the HD
- the list goes on

I suggest that you run the and post the log here.
You can do a little test by booting in the safe mode to see if the boot time is the same as normal mode. If it takes same amount of time or longer than it is pretty much hardware issue, since the safe mode loads only the most necessary drivers to keep the PC operational, but I doubt that this is the case.

Member Avatar for yeti

Thanks for the reply.

I ran some spyware softeware already and was able to clean up some of the registy files. Is there a hardware diagnostics I can run?

The laptop booted in safemode was still slow. We took the laptop in for a software dianostics and there was no problems w/ the software. So I'm just wondering if I can run the hardware diagnostics now?

Thanks,

Yeti

Member Avatar for Chaky

There are various memory testing software that you can try. would be my recommendation.

For the rest of the hardware I say try SiSoft Sandra. Lite version is free (evaluation). It has many features, including various benchmarks and Analysis and Advice feature that can help you speed up your PC. It detects hardware settings and such that slows down your PC.

Member Avatar for yeti

cool thanks! i'll go ahead and run the SiSandra diagnostic and see what it tells me!

appreciate the help once again!

Member Avatar for Chaky

Feel free to post the log of Analysis and Advice tool and I'll see if there is anything I can do.

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