Resolved How can one tell if a power surge damaged a laptop?

I looked via the search feature and didn't find a topic that addressed this specific issue.

My laptop is an HP Pavilion dv8000 with Windows XP SP2.

Here are my questions and will supply situational information below: What diagnostics can I run in safe mode to see if a laptop has been damaged from a power surge? Does this situation sound like a power surge to begin with? How can I recover my laptop from this issue?

So I am at my girlfriends where my laptop was not plugged into a surge protector (though have since found one and put it to use- the following has never been an issue here or anywhere in my computer usage past). From around 12noon my girlfriends analog clock attached to her television had been switching between normal functioning to its minute and hour hands spinning around at a tremendous speed. My computer, which is located directly below it had no visible issue during these rapid rotations for awhile. The clock spun around rapidly many times each hour though I can't put a number on it. Please pardon my ignorance; is this a visible indication of a power surge? No other electronic item (which is not connected to a surge protector) had similar issues in her room- I don't know about the rest of the house.

Soon my screen began to lose its backlighting for a few seconds at a time in no particularly standardized way. I saw a thread here and I thought an inverter was going out as there was no display distortion. This flicker happened six or seven times for a duration less than five to ten seconds between 12pm and 3:30pm. Around 3pm it's showing some very obvious slow down with hiccups while using Photoshop CS4- which rarely, though sometimes, happens. Then, around 4:30pm, my computer begins to slow dramatically down with its CPU use skyrocketing between 26% and 80%. I was not using anything out of the ordinary and not pushing its processor in any way. I was playing a podcast with the most recent iTunes and had bittorrent on in the background. Photoshop had been closed for awhile now. So was my browser. As far as I can tell there is no reason these system resources should have been taken up. I scan for viruses daily with Avast and do not go to websites of disrepute! The only software which has been installed within the last two months has been the drivers for my printer/scanner combination.

So. Now that my laptop has decided to slow down so dramatically I thought it would be a good idea to restart it. It shut down properly with no issues. But upon the restart became stuck on the Windows XP splash screen.

I did a hard reboot by holding down the power key once and it's now in safe mode with networking abilities. I am now on my desktop and need to know what to do next.

Sorry for the play by play- I figured all this information is important for a diagnosis of the problem. I'm thinking of doing a system recovery with the system rollback from the "help and support" program. But if the problem is hardware then I don't think that will help any. So, is there a diagnostic I can run to remedy the problem? How do I recover my laptop from this issue?

Thank you!

 

If you can get to Safe Mode that most likely means drivers or startup programs cannot run. Maybe there was damage to one of the devices, for example, the USB ports. If the diagnostics identify anything, you should be able to disable that device in the BIOS (startup configuration settings). You might just want to try disabling any devices you can in the BIOS and see if it will start normally.

Hopefully, only a driver has "popped out" and needs to be reinstalled. If diagnostics don't turn up anything, you can try doing a System Restore to a date before the power problem.

Matt

 

Thank you!

Hey, thank you all for taking a look and giving some direction. I consulted one of my room mates and he suggested that the problem had more to do with a dieing hard drive. Lo and behold it was! I installed HDD Health which scans with S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics (I had never heard of this before) and my drives health is 29% (eek!)

I restored to a previous point and it was then fixed. No more problems with the screen dimming either.

Though I'll need to find a hard drive soon. Anyone know a good place to get a deal?