Is my battery dying?

[mzjo]

I have a netbook which is now about 3 years old. Just recently it has taken to failing to boot occasionally. It will start to boot but never gets to operational. Sometimes I have the desktop (the "bureau" in french) but no lower task bar; sometimes I have a blank screen. It doesn't seem to be directly related to the percentage of charge as indicated by the machine but connecting to the mains seems to solve the problem sometimes after going through a sequence of several times going to sleep before I manage to get it to switch off completely correctly.
The computer has been dropped a couple of times by my daughter apparently with no ill-effects but one never knows.
So the question is -  battery dead or hard drive dying?
What does the team think?
For information it's an HP Compaq mini 110 with a 160Go hard drive. I think the processor is an Atom N270.

[tonycollinet]

Sounds more like hard drive to me. That is also the part most likely to be damaged by dropping (Other than the screen). It could (potentially) also be a virus. If there are any important files on the machine, I'd suggest getting them backed up now.

It might be worth trying a system restore back to a time when the machine was working. What version of windows do you have.

If you are able, next I would try a reinstall from the recovery partition. There should be instructions on how to do this either with the machine, or on the Compaq website. Beware though that if you do that, the machine is reset to "as delivered" state - make sure everything is backed up first, and that you have install media for any programs

[ian]

If it were the hard drive then I'd expect failure to be immediate and terminal. No disk found and really I have actually looked says the BIOS. Or random and final during usage when the computers trips over a bad sector. Perspiration doesn't usually get a bad disk up and running.

From your description it sounds more like a failure to boot which suggests something indigestible during start-up. It's worth trying a boot into safe mode, that'll disable much of the baggage, and at least determine where the problem lies. Fixing it thereafter is iterative (finding the errant piece of software) or nuclear (reinstall Windows). Of course, if this happened recently, try a prior restore point.

That's not to say it isn't hardware, but in my experience hardware failures are usually terminal machine no beep. Then again the narcolepsy seems odd. Computers shut down spontaneous because they have crashed hard which I suppose could be hard disk related. Or bad software. Or overheating.

You can spend a million years diagnosing computer issues like this and never reach a conclusion. If no easy fix is apparent*, I'd back up personal files and restore Windows from the partition. It's a pain but probably less pain.

*
1. Try Safe Mode
2. Run a hard disk check
3. Restore from a known good restore point

Google your version of Windows and the above to find out the precise details.

[Biggsy]

HDD bad sectors have caused partial and inconsistent booting in my experience.  I'd do a scan anyway (if necessary by removing the drive and doing it with another computer).

[mzjo]

Thanks for the advice. That pretty much mirrors what I was thinking. The Windows is an XP SP3 (the netbook version). I will see about getting an external drive to back up all the files although there is little that is really important.
While the beast is functionning (as it is at present; I am using it now) I am unlikely to go  beyond doing a disc scan. With XP becoming unsupported next year a Windows failure will probably just be an excuse to convert it to Linux (I have already booted it with Puppy on a USB key although Puppy has issues with the network chip).