Big Laptop Trouble

[ssc456]

ok big problem, big thread lol.

well i sold my laptop tyo a friend of mine like 4 weeks ago, for a few days its fine with no problems then it comes up with a black screen saying missing file, cant remeber exactly what file it was.

so i take the laptop and reformat it with windows vista again, 2 days later volsnap.sys is missing or corrupt.

so again i format it and install windows vista 6 days later hes on the computer jus on myspace when it freezes up he is unable to move the mouse and the keyboard is completely unresponsive.

im there with him at the time so i do the normal thing wait 5 mins to see if anything will respon if not hold the power button for 4 seconds.

so after it shuts down i try rebooting but it jus sits on the vista loading screen and will nto budge for over half hour, so i try safe mode and it starts loading a few of the files and stops on 1 of them and will not continue.

also if i try booting from c.d it will take 20 mins to load the vista setup, so i take the hardrive out and put the c.d in and it takes like 2 mins to load the vista setup.

so i put it down to a faulty hardrive so ive recently ordered a new hardrive for the laptop installed it today and i hit the power button an it come up with the bios flash screen and sits there with a blinking cursor because it has no OS, so i turn he laptop off put a vista c.d in the drive and boot, but now the bios flash screen loads but it will not move from there.

so after a good few mins of quiet honestly taking the hardrive out and putting it back in it decides to go past the bios screen, so i get to load up vistas setup and install windows vista. noting that during the installation it restarts several times, so i had vista installed my anti virus installed and was browsing the web when the battery on the laptop dies which puts it into hibernate or standby.

so i get the charger and plug it in and it wont resume from hibernate it jus freezes up so after a 10 min wait i have to hold the power button for 4 seconds it turns off and when i try to turn it back on it freezes on the bios screen again :O

this is really bugging me i cant figure out whas wrong the symptoms really did sound like a faulty hardrive and this 1 agin for some reason sounds like a faulty hardrive as if i unplug the hardrive and turn the computer on it will go past the bios screen but sit there with a blinking cursor doing nothing.

what do you suggest i do ?
maybe take the laptop apart completely and find the CMOS battery and unplug that for a few mins ?
its not under warranty anmore so i really would like to stay away from compaq as they would probably charge alot.

 

[CrossCech]

so i had vista installed my anti virus installed and was browsing the web when the battery on the laptop dies which puts it into hibernate or standby.

so i get the charger and plug it in

So were you trying to load your OS this whole time with the power running from battery and not with the power cord plugged in? That's not a good idea when installing your OS.

About your other issues ... there's a lot going on here. You're kind of all over the place in how you're trying to narrow down the problem.

Since you've brought in a new hard drive, and seemed to have some success in loading your OS (Vista), I wonder if there's a problem with your memory ... which could have been the issue the whole time.

I also wonder if this OS is native to your laptop or if XP should be installed instead. What is the laptop model?

***Another thought would be to reinstall/upgrade the BIOS of the laptop. Perhaps it's corrupted just enough to cause all these freeze up problems. ***