Hello everybody!

I know this is not a computer forum (That's why I'm writing in the off-topic section), but I could use some help with my laptop problems, and thought of the most friendly and helpful community I know

Just for reference, my september 2009-bought Packard Bell laptop (TJ-62) came with Vista installed, but I got the Windows 7 upgrade DVD (I was too lazy too update before).

It was working normal until last week, nothing new was installed, I don't move it so often, no virus was detected, etc. In general, nothing out of ordinary happened. However, it started to be slower and slower, and as a Windows user I started to think "I have to format".
Finally last weekend it was even worse, taking too long to start, not recovering from hibernation, even problems to shut down, so I did my back up and restarted once more. It gave me the recovery disk options and some stuff more, but I could never start again.
I proceeded to format (It took a long time, because it could not even load the installation program from the DVD), put Windows 7 and got it running. I used it for 2 or 3 days, and started having the same errors.
Yesterday it didn't start anymore, so I decided to install Ubuntu. Formatted the disk and used Ubuntu DVD to check disk and memory (Everything OK). Got Ubuntu running, but it was strangely unstable (Some programs didn't want to open). Restarted and it gave an error (Translating from spanish, something like "problems in the core"). Updated everything and tried to restart again, but it never shut down (Stayed in the black screen waiting for some process I can't remember). Turned off with the power button, turned on again, but never loaded OS (It gave a black screen saying it couldn't mount something and couldn't start).
I got tired and had to work.

I'm not a computer expert, but usually I solve every software problem I get. However, this looks to me more related to the HDD itself. However, I have formatted twice without errors, and the disk check that comes with Ubuntu ran OK. So here, I'm clueless.

What would you recommend me to do?

Thanks for your time and help!

Power supply going out? Whatever, it must be a hardware problem since it persists across different OS installations.

If you want to try something like Puppy Linux running from a CD, that should temporarily help go around hard drive problems.

From the sound if it, it indeed seems like a HDD problem to me. If you can dedicate the time to it, a useful way to check a HDD is to not just format it, but to "zero-out" your drive. (Which basically means that instead of just telling your computer the HDD is formatted and empty, it will write a 0 bit to every part of your hard drive.) If you do have bad sectors, this is a very effective way of finding them. I don't know from the top of my head which tools you can use to do that in windows or ubuntu, but it should be easy to find on Google

Thanks both.
Geneven, I thought loading Ubuntu from the CD, but I don't really know if it worth it. The problem looks to happen when writing/reading from the HDD.

That is what I've been trying to find Pfuh3z. I'll try Hiren's boot CD and see if any of those softs works.

More ideas?

Cheers!

Yeah, I'm gonna vote HD as well. (BTW, they still make Packard Bells!? o_0) My vote would be to swap it out with a fresh one, then try loading Ubuntu and see if everything works fine. If you can't swap it out, go grab a copy of Parted Magic (I think it's at 4.8 now) and run the diagnostic tools against your hard drive. It'd be a good way to ensure that your HD isn't dying. If it turns out it is, then you'll need to replace it before going any further.

There's one other possibility which hasn't been broached. It could be a ram issue. The Parted Magic disk also has a memory check utility you can use to test the system and see if it's got memory issues. If it does, find the bad chip (if more than one, you'll need to use process of elimination to find out if it's just one bad chip or several) and replace it, then see if that solves the issues. Also, consider ditching Windows 7. It'll be less headaches for you further down the road.

there is some linux and windows rescue boot cds you have to check (google) some of them have hdd check. i think your hdd is going to die or dead already.