Pavillion dv5-1002nr with 32-bit Vista

[TMA-2003]

Using HP Recovery Disks, the notebook prematurely shuts down. The recovery was started due to stability problems resulting in Vista not loading. During some of the running of the Recovery Manager, the error message has occurred:

STOP:c000021a {Fatal System Error}

The initial session process or system process terminated unexpectantly with a status of 0x00000000 (0x0000001 0x0010037c).

The system has been shut down. Any ideas? Is Vista still on the Hard Drive?

[DavidPK]

Hi,

Shut down the notebook.  Tap away at f10 as you start the notebook to enter the bios menu.  Under the Advanced or Diagnostic tab you should find the facility to run tests on both the Hard Drive and Memory.  Post back with the details of any error messages.

Regards,

DP-K

[TMA-2003]

Performed the testing. For the Memory test- this passed without problems. For the Hard Drive test, the "short" test performed w/o any problems. The "long" test, scanned until ca. 33minutes & 17seconds remaining or 57% complete and gave the message " #1008-Replace Hard Disk 1. Re-did the tests to verify and for consistency, then check the analysis results. The results for the failed "long" test  gave two columns labeled RESULT & TIME. There are 20 entries with 2/ 20 with the code "301" and 18/20 with the code 601. The data under the Time heading listed a numerical 8 digit then hyphenated 6 digit sequence. So what is the status of the Hard Drive? Thanks alot for your help.

[DavidPK]

Hi,

The errors would indicate that your Hard Drive is failing and will need to be replaced - this is also consistent with the issues you describe.

I'm assuming your notebook is out of warranty, so if you would like a guide on replacing the Hard Drive yourself, please let me know.

Regards,

DP-K

[TMA-2003]

I searched HP's web site for replacement Hard Drives and it seems they have farmed out  the service to several companies, only one of which carries the drive. I did find a site called "Drive Solutions.com" that has both P/N's of the recommended drives. As to installing the drive, I can do ( I have taken out hard drives before). For the operating system though, that I have never done ( especially a complete installtion, from scratch). Do I have to purchase another copy of Vista or can I retrieve it from the failing drive? Can I upgrade from the 250GB drive to the 320GB drive w/o any major problems ( keeping the r.p.m.'s the same and buffer size the same)? Why did the drive fail? Thermal degradation?  Thanks alot.

[DavidPK · Accepted solution]

Hi,

To answer your questions.

1.  Regarding the Hard Drive, you are in no way restricted to a particular manufacturer, so you may well find it cheaper to buy the HDD from somewhere like Amazon.  According to Page 62 of your Maintenance & Service Guide your notebook can certainly take a 320Gb HDD and again, if you wanted to, you could install a 7200rpm drive if you wished ( you may lose a little battery life, but hardly noticable when weighed against the performance increase ).  I would stay away from Advanced Format HDDs though.

So to sum up, any 320Gb Sata II ( 5400rpm or 7200rpm ) HDD will be fine - an example would This Hard Drive.

2.  You can use your existing HP Recovery Discs to reinstall Vista on the new HDD - they will also reinstall all the original software that was bundled with your notebook as well as re-creating the Recovery Partition on the new HDD - a guide on using your set of Recovery Discs to install Vista on the new HDD is Here.

3.  Why the drive failed is impossible to say without further analysis - the average lifespan of a HDD is between 3 - 5 years however some fail much sooner while others last far longer.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,

DP-K

[TMA-2003]

Thanks for all your help. I'm responding using the Pavillion. The only interesting item was that the HP Recovery Disks would not reinstall Vista. On a hunch, I used the original Recovery disks I made when we purchased the Pavillion, and the whole system loaded on its first try ( it did take awhile for all the programs to load). Thanks again, this is the first time I ever employed a forum for help, and it was a great experience.