Second Opinion on Freezes and crashes

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Soker

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So i own this Aspire 5741G laptop and in the past i've had several blue screens that comes and go by like 3 in 3 months for 1 week or so. But thats not why i'm here today. A week ago my laptop has started to crash Windows Explorer several times and it gets slow as hell randomly, the browser i use also crashes o stops working and most webpages take a lot of time to load and videos (while charging/loading) keep freezing randomly for 2 seconds until they completely load, games, sometimes they open other time they take huge time to load, and when ingame it sometimes runs completely fine and then PUFF it freezes for 2 minutes or so. Also when the laptop is turning on sometimes it takes a huge time (and i mean huge like 20 minutes) just to reach the Windows opening logo.
At first i though it might've been some corrupted file or something, but even when i formatted the laptop (restored to fabric settings reinstalled OS and all that crap) the problem maintained itself.
At this point i started to run some tests mainly on the Hard Drive, and well acording to my laptop (Check for errors at boot) everything is fine with it but according to Seagate Seatools the Short DST test fails and the Long Generic Test also fails.
Hell i'm almost 90% sure its the damn HDD that is dying but I kinda wanted a second opinion before i buy a 70$ new HDD.
Thanks in advance by the way.
 
and videos (while charging/loading) keep freezing randomly
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While "charging/loading"? What does that mean? Does it freeze if the battery is fully charged? Running just off battery? Running just off charger?

Charging and loading are two totally different and totally unrelated things. So "charging the battery" has nothing to do with "loading programs" (assuming the battery does not have an internal short or partial short - common for failing batteries - putting too much strain on the charging/regulating circuits).

but even when i formatted the laptop (restored to fabric settings reinstalled OS and all that crap) the problem maintained itself.
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Reformatting and reinstalling should ALWAYS be a LAST resort option because (1) as seen here, it frequently does not help, (2) it sets you back months if not years in critical security updates, (3) nothing is learned, and (4) potential clues to the real problem are often destroyed (overwritten). And of course, (5) all your personal data and downloaded programs, and updated hardware drivers are lost.

Sadly, you did not tell us what OS you are using.

Have you scanned for malware? With what? Was anything found? Is your computer otherwise fully updated?

Assuming this is a Seagate/Maxtor drive, if Seatools reports problems it is unable to fix, the drive is bad or going bad (or at least should not be trusted with data). Check the warranty. Many Seagate drives are warrantied for 3 years.
 
Digerati said:
While "charging/loading"? What does that mean? Does it freeze if the battery is fully charged? Running just off battery? Running just off charger?
Click to expand...

Err by charging /loading i mean the videos ...how do i put it..you know when you're on youtube there's this grey bar advancing below the red bar on the video (buffering or whast his name i can't really recall)

Ah my OS is Windows 7 Home Premium.
The drive came with this 5 year old laptop so the warranty is long gone.
Before i reformatted i did a full scan with BitDefender and he found nothing, also the problem persisted in safe mode.
 
I see. What happens when you click to view the Youtube video is your browser begins to download the video file, temporarily storing it on disk. Then your video "viewer" starts loading the file from the disk into its "buffer" (a designated chunk of RAM) and when the buffer is large enough, your viewer begins to play the video. After the video completes, the temporary file is deleted, and the "buffer" is freed for the next video.

The two bars you see are for the downloading process and the playing process.

Happening in Safe Mode pretty much rules out driver issues as Safe Mode uses Windows generic drivers.

Nevertheless, Seatools errors are not good. You can try running Error Checking (or chkdsk /r) from a command prompt) to see if the errors could be repaired, but frankly, I would not trust the drive and would replace it. I am not sure that is your only problem, but since the drive holds the operating system and hardware drivers, I think this should be replaced before assuming anything else.

I will note, however, that heat is also a common cause of sudden freezes and notebooks are notorious for heat issues because of their compact case and the makers' failure to make essential cleaning of the interior of heat trapping dust nearly impossible for the "normal" user. :( Heat is often responsible for the premature failure of electronics and electro-mechanical devices.
 
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