So my laptop is getting up there in age, it's about 6 years old now, and I've started having a small issue with it. My laptop will freeze up sometimes for a couple minutes and any video/audio I have playing at the moment will become distorted and kind of "buzz". My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1440, I ran a diagnostic on the Dell website and it said there was something wrong with my hard drive. What I want to know is: Is is a problem with my hard drive, or are there other fixes I could try? I do plan on buying a new laptop this summer and don't want to buy a new hard drive if I don't have to.

Well, I think the problem it's the hard drive. I had a problem when I bought my last Dell (Inspiron 5421) and, in the first week of use, it started to freeze everything and then: boom. Stopped working. I had to call Dell's assistance and they changed it in front of me, at my house. :D But, if your notebook is 6 years now I think you should buy a new one, it's not worthy :) Hope it helps, good luck! (Try a second opinion asking to a technician too)

If something's wrong with your hard drive, it's basically a ticking time bomb. Once it dies, you pretty much aren't going to be able to get that data back without paying $$$$ and even then it might not work. However, it sounds like it could potentially be a motherboard problem as well... If you aren't getting a computer until next summer, depending on where you live, you might want to look at getting a new hard drive on Black Friday as they'll be extremely cheap. As long as you get one that's a 2.5 inches SATA drive, it should work with your computer!

Here is a certified Microsoft link on how to check your hard drive for errors. I wouldn't trust the Dell website that much, personally. If you need more help there is some more solid advice here.

If you're in the US, you could also try taking it to MicroCenter, but I think their diagnostics might be ~75 bucks, which might be more expensive than a hard drive by itself. However, if those tests don't come up conclusively that it's a hard drive issue, then that might be a good next option. MicroCenter is better than Best Buy because their staff are way more knowledgeable, won't try to upsell you, and do most of their repairs in-house. BB is a little shadier but good enough in a pinch.

Source: I'm a computer programmer/developer by trade, I've repaired my own laptops many times (including replacing heatsinks and other components), and I've taken my laptop to microcenter after it started having issues I couldn't fix so I have experience with their repair center. Feel free to ask me any more questions :)

Thanks for the Microsoft page, I ran through the hard drive check and there weren't any issues found. So I guess it's okay? I'll have to have someone look at my computer over the holidays, make sure there's nothing seriously wrong. Wow MicroCenter looks really nice, wish we had some in Canada. Would my best bet for now be to backup my computer files? I don't want to lose anything if my computer does for some reason kick the bucket. I don't trust Dell much either, I spent over an hour with their tech support last night and had to be transferred twice because nobody knew how to help me. In the end they tried to charge me money just to walk me through how to check my hard drive.

ugh that sucks that they charged you money though I'm not surprised. When my first Dell laptop LITERALLY BURNED ME I had to beat them up and threaten to sue to get them to give me a new laptop... >:(

I would definitely back up your data if you can, and suggest running the SMART tool from that second link I gave you. I ran chkdsk on my laptop hard drive recently and had no issues, but the SMART tool showed me that I did have a bad sector, which is basically the first step towards hard drive failure. Sometimes they can be fixed, sometimes not, but they are something to be wary of. Hope this helps and if you have any more questions just ping me!

(sorry for such a late response, university has been crazy) Well they tried to charge me money, but I just hung up the phone before they could XD Oh goodness that's awful, my laptop has never been that bad ._.

I finally got around to downloading the SMART tool. When I first opened it up this is what it looks like, when I clicked on the Health Status this popped up. Not really sure what to do with the information it gave me, any advice?

Sorry I saw this but I wanted to look at my software before I gave you an answer but this week was busy and with the holiday I didn't get a chance >< But! I did find this info here, apparently that's just a default value: here.

I wanted to get back to you sooner but this week was absolutely nuts and my work is also tech support, kinda, so I was super-tired @

Oh no worries I completely understand (sorry again for being a bother) Hunh so it's not too big of an issue then and my hard drive is alright (or for now at least)?

it should give you a reading after, the page I linked is also the website for that software and I think they have an FAQ you can follow. I'm away from the computer that has the info right now, sorry I can't help more atm, but I will try to look when I get back home! Best of luck!

No worries, I'll check out the website and see what I can figure out. :)

[edit] I just remembered something else I'd been meaning to ask. I've heard/read that if you have more than one display/audio driver they will compete against one another and that can be an issue for computers freezing up/making buzzing sounds. I have no idea how much truth is in this and was wondering, there have been a couple times after my computer has frozen that I'll get a notification saying my graphics driver temporarily stopped working. I checked my device manager and I have two items listed under Display adapters: HP Remote Graphics Driver and Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family Would disabling one of those help at all or make things worse?

hmmm I've never heard that before, but after looking it up, the HP Remote Graphics might be causing issues, if only because it is for remote sharing/control. That is, controlling your HP laptop from a tablet or another computer. I take it you're not using this feature, so for this to be on and enabled isn't doing anything for you. So try uninstalling that software in Add or Remove Programs and go from there.

I uninstalled it and my computer hasn't frozen all day, it usually freezes at least a couple times a day Thank you so much for your help! :) I'm so relieved my hard drive is fine and it was just the driver causing problems

ahhh I'm so glad to hear it! does a dance for your computer :D

Aha so it seems I may have spoken too soon, computer decided to freeze up again today I went back into my device manager and noticed that under processors it has "Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4200 .00GHz" listed twice. I went in and check all the properties of the two processors, the only difference I could find is that the second one was first installed two seconds after the first one was. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to have two, if not would it be safe to uninstall one of them or would that just be asking for a disaster?