Laptop has startup issues after vacuum

[Buccellati]

Hello! I am currently on a Dell Inspiron 1545 with a Windows 7 Ultimate OS on it. Recently, I had to get the harddrive replaced as well as get the OS replaced as my old one was giving me issues.

Before I got the harddrive replaced, I would be on an endless loop of startup repair. Afterwards, my computer started up just fine, but my fan was still running too much and my laptop was overheating. Though supposedly the computer was cleaned when it was repaired, I suspected there may still be dust lodged in the fan, and a friend suggested I vacuum the fan, as he'd had no issues after doing that.

I read about the static issues, but since I was vacuuming just the fan from the outside of the casing, I didn't think it'd be a huge issue. And it actually did help! My laptop fan isn't overworking itself anymore. But now, trying to start up after vacuuming the fan, the first day I had an issue and had to go into startup repair. It was on "attempting repairs" for over 10 minutes, so I did a forced reboot and the computer started up fine.

Today, I tried to turn on my laptop after it running all night just fine, and once again, I was taken to the "windows failed to start up" screen, and couldn't even choose a normal reboot, rather, it sent me straight to the startup repair. The first time, I might not have waited long enough for it to find the problems and I rebooted, then startup repair was successful and I was able to do a system restore, and here I am now.

I am still worried about what damage might have been done and if there's any way to fix what has been done. I figure the issue isn't TREMENDOUS if I can still start up eventually and everything runs just fine once it does. I'm just a little afraid and would like some advice. Sorry for the wall of text but thank you for reading!

 

[mjmacka]

From what you said, I don't think that vacuuming caused any issues.

There are a few things that I would do if I were you.

1) Hit (usually f12) the one time boot options before you seen the Windows splash screen.
Run the system diagnostics (also sometimes accessible via bios).
See if anything fails.

2) Once the PC passes diagnostics, run a stress test. Prime 95 or something similar is what you want.
You need to rule out hardware as your issue and diagnostics + stress test is a good way to do so.

3) Once you've ruled out hardware, software is causing your issue.
Open the command prompt (cmd) as an administrator and run the command: sfc /scannow
This runs a system integrity check on your OS files.
Also, run a windows update, I noticed about a year ago I had a similar issue (custom built PC) that was resolved by Windows Update.
I would also update your drivers from the Dell website.

4) If none of the above steps have produce any resolutions, reinstall your OS.

Good Luck

 

[Buccellati]

Thank you very much!

 

[mjmacka]

No problem. Feel free to PM me or reply to your post if you have any other questions.

 

[Buccellati]

No problem. Feel free to PM me or reply to your post if you have any other questions.

Ahh, alright, so yesterday I planned on going through some of the steps you listed, but to my surprise, the computer booted just fine! And my laptop fan, though it ran a bit loudly at times, well my laptop didn't overheat at all, the entire day. It ran like a dream! I installed some updates right before bed and restarted it, then shut it off.

This morning, it also started up just fine, took me to the login, I typed in my password, and the welcome screen was taking literally forever, so I did a forced reboot, tried to start it as normal, and this time got stuck on the starting windows screen. Once again, I did a forced reboot and this time, ran startup repair and did a system restore. That's what made it run fine last time, so I thought I'd be okay, but after logging in, the welcome screen took a while, but I figured it was because of the system restore, so I just waited. Then I got an entirely black screen with the cursor. I was about to start up the task manager, and also enable to get an explorer window thanks to the sticky keys announcement, and then I ran explorer.exe, and here I am. I should also say that since I'm the only one that uses the laptop, I'm removing my password, hopefully that'll remove one step of the process.

So I figure, It's good that it eventually starts up one way or another, but I have no idea what the issue is anymore! It runs just fine once it starts up so...I don't know if I need to get the OS disc and try a repair or something, but I'll have to get that from my cousin who initially fixed the laptop...

Any tips you have would be incredibly helpful. Thank you so much!

 

[mjmacka]

Run the hardware diagnostics. It sounds to me like your hard drive is failing. I know you said that it was just swapped, but rule that out first by running the dell onboard diagnostics.

It really sounds like a read issue on your hard drive. It's not unreadable dead, but read errors can cause slow logins.

 

[Buccellati]

Run the hardware diagnostics. It sounds to me like your hard drive is failing. I know you said that it was just swapped, but rule that out first by running the dell onboard diagnostics.

It really sounds like a read issue on your hard drive. It's not unreadable dead, but read errors can cause slow logins.

Ahh, alright. I have to admit I'm a bit afraid to run that stuff, thinking that it won't boot on me or something afterwards, but It's gotta be done. I read that it might be a virus but I did scans with AVG+MalwareBytes and nothing, so it might be the hard drive. My only other question is how do I go about running a stress test? I've never had to do this before, so. Thanks once again!

 

[mjmacka]

Okay, this is how you would run a stress test on your machine:
Hit the F12 one time boot options before you seen the Windows splash screen.
Run the system diagnostics. See if anything fails.

Basically this test checks the CPU, RAM, HDD, and a few motherboard components. I'm not sure about Dells but some PC hardware diagnostics software (Geek Squad's MRI) run a small stress at the end.

A failure indicates a bad component that will need to be replaced. This is a physical test, not a software test. A HDD write failure means that the machine is having issues writing to the disk due to a failure in the platter or device that reads from/writes to the platter.

The reason we are doing this first is to rule out bad hardware. If a hardware component is bad, no software is going to fix it.

 

[Buccellati]

Okay, this is how you would run a stress test on your machine:
Hit the F12 one time boot options before you seen the Windows splash screen.
Run the system diagnostics. See if anything fails.

Basically this test checks the CPU, RAM, HDD, and a few motherboard components. I'm not sure about Dells but some PC hardware diagnostics software (Geek Squad's MRI) run a small stress at the end.

A failure indicates a bad component that will need to be replaced. This is a physical test, not a software test. A HDD write failure means that the machine is having issues writing to the disk due to a failure in the platter or device that reads from/writes to the platter.

The reason we are doing this first is to rule out bad hardware. If a hardware component is bad, no software is going to fix it.

Alright so here I am from a different computer. I decided to leave my laptop on sleep as I needed to do some things today and couldnt risk it not starting up, but when I woke it up from sleep, it showed me the dell boot up screen twice, then once again and this time I went to run the system diagnostics. Oh, I should say that on one of those previous startups, I got a blue screen, something about a kernel error.

Anyway, as of now the diagnostics are still running, but sure enough, this is what I got:
Error Code 0142
2000-0142
Hard Drive 0 self test unsuccessful
Status 70

I'm already looking at taking it in again, but? What now?