computer gremlins

[shep]

So beyond strange...I have a very nice Samsung laptop that has always run flawlessly. I take good care of it and it's never been abused by a virus. Yesterday when I turned it on...nada...black screen. I reboot into Linux...it works. I reboot again...nada Windows 7...reboot into another partion with another version of 7. It works but doesn't recognize the wi-fi. Etc etc. I finally got the other 7 to boot using F8 and various combos there-of. No keyboard, no touch-pad. Another reboot gives me the blue screen of death. Eventually I got 7 back but still no keyboard. As you can see, this morning it all works again. I am pretty good with this stuff but I am totally bewildered. Bad cess?

[richidoo]

Sounds like memory or disc acting up.

Backup anything important right away
Test HDD and RAM - usually there is diagnostic software in hidden partition accessible through BIOS screen
Try System Restore
Try Windows Repair last resort. You'll have to do updates again. Since you say it's fine now I think repair is not needed.

[shep]

memory seems fine. There are no errors on the disk and sometimes the keyboard is recognized and then again not. I did a virus scan and a malware one. Zilch. Totally strange.

[richidoo]

Try system restore if you are running it.

[mdconnelly]

I was seeing something quite similar on my laptop just before the holidays and it was definitely a hard-drive starting to go bad.   My first hard-drive scan showed no errors, but did a full backup anyway and a subsequent scan showed a number of errors. 

While it could certainly be any number of things, I'd still back up that hard drive asap and try a restore (ideally to a different drive).

[richidoo]

There are different kinds of scans on HD which stress different aspects. You want to make sure you do a hysteresis scan (aka seek), among the other types too. It can uncover failures related to platter bearing wear. I think that is the most common failure mode for HDD. I use tufftest.  Could be RAM too, especially if kernel or HAL is loaded into bad mems.

[Carlman]

My laptops generally have either a bad hard drive or bad motherboard.  My guess is mobo.
-C

[mdconnelly]

When I see consistent hard failure, I tend to assume an unrecoverable electronic failure (e.g. mobo and coffee don't mix).  When I see intermittent failures - particularly when it seems to occur during boot (which kinda describes Shep's symptoms), my experience is typically a hard-drive starting to go south.  I work in a company of about 50 people, and we've seen this happen to many of our laptops.  So much so that we warn our users to let us know asap when they see similar symptoms.  Catch it early enough and you can backup and restore to a new drive.

[shep]

I appreciate your feedback...all. I ran several different HD checks and came up with a clean bill of health so I am thinking more motherboard now, although at the moment everything is working normally. Odd that the keyboard should be the one to go though. I have no touchpad either at the moment but since the mouse works...

[richidoo]

Did you check RAM?

[shep]

Not specifically. I will look for some freeware to do this. I got the touchpad back by reinstalling the Synaptics driver soft. Lord knows where the older drivers went though. Gremlins...they have it in for me.

[richidoo]

tufftest is $2