Hardware testing?

Over the last month or so, my laptop has been acting a bit... strange, to put it mildly. On more than a few occasions now, I'll power it up only to be met with nothing but a black screen. So, I was staring at my screen this morning only to be greeted by that classic, soul-crushing message: "bootmgr image is corrupt, the system cannot boot." It’s one of those errors that just makes you want to close the laptop and walk away for a few hours—it’s incredibly frustrating when the OS decides it simply doesn't want to cooperate. If you find yourself staring at this same error, it usually means the boot configuration data has taken a bit of a hit—maybe a botched update or some unexpected shutdown—and the system can't find its way home. I've found that sometimes, things aren't as broken as they seem; it's often just a matter of repairing the boot files via a recovery drive. If you have a Windows installation disk handy, you might be able to run a few command-line fixes—like `bootrec /fixmbr` or `bootrec /rebuildbcd`—to get things back on track. It’s a bit of a process, I guess, but it’s worth a shot before assuming the hardware itself has given up the ghost.After a few restarts, I think I finally managed to get it to boot up. Windows 7 And after that—well, I guess you can expect the laptop to run without any further issues for about a week.
Yesterday, that same error popped up again—though, strangely enough, I managed to get Windows 7 back up and running today without any real trouble.
A colleague of mine mentioned that I might be looking at a failing hard drive—possibly some bad sectors—or maybe there's just something wonky going on with the RAM.
I've heard there are certain hardware diagnostic tools out there that might help pinpoint exactly where things are going sideways.
I guess I just realized—it finally clicked. Hiren's BootCD I see a few different testing tools listed here, but I’m honestly not quite sure how to navigate them. I've put together a list of what's on that bootable disc—if anyone feels like walking me through the ropes, I’d really appreciate it. Specifically, I'm wondering what exactly I should be looking for when running these tests, and perhaps a little guidance on the best way to go about it?

Just running some initial tests here.
Just testing out some things for Bart—nothing major, just getting the gears turning.
I’ve been running a quick HDD scan lately—just trying to get a better handle on the health of my old drives before they decide to give up the ghost entirely. It's one of those little digital housekeeping tasks that you really shouldn't ignore if you value your data. I suppose there's always that nagging feeling that a drive is acting just a bit too sluggish, isn't there? Anyway, I'm just checking things over.
I suppose I should probably run a memory test—just to be safe, really.
S&M stress tests... I suppose we should probably talk about them. There’s a certain level of tension that comes with pushing hardware to its absolute limit—that specific kind of anxiety where you're staring at a progress bar, wondering if you've just pushed a component right over the edge. It’s a bit of a delicate dance, isn't it? You want to see what the machine can actually handle, but there's always that nagging thought in the back of your mind—the fear that a failed test might mean more than just a software error, but actual, physical damage. Maybe it's just my own cautious nature, but I tend to approach these things with a fair amount of hesitation.
Victoria (Hard Drive Info / Diagnostics)

Probably easiest to just run a repair and see if it actually holds up http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523...ader-problems/
...

I honestly don't think a repair would do much—I've tried reinstalling Windows several times after a full hard drive format, and nothing seems to stick. It really points toward a hardware issue, I guess.

It's probably not bad sectors since a full format didn't fix anything. Either the whole drive is dying or something else is up... If you can, try running this little tool. It's basically the industry standard for testing HDDs http://crystalmark.info/software/Cry...o/index-e.html

swifttinker40 said:I really don't think a software repair is going to cut it—I've tried nuking the drive and doing clean Windows installs more than a few times now, and nothing changes. That pretty much points to a hardware failure at this point.

Once you finish that HDD scan, go ahead and grab whatever diagnostic tool the actual manufacturer of your laptop's drive provides—just run a full test through their specific utility and see what it tells you.

I just ran an HDD scan, and this is what came back.
From what I can gather, there are quite a few errors showing up—which makes me wonder if there’s actually a way to fix them, or if I'm just looking at a lost cause.

Look, you’ve definitely got some bad sectors there—plus those UDMA CRC errors are a dead giveaway that there's a communication breakdown happening with the disk controller. It's not like your brand-new drive is actually dying on you, though.

Thanks Benjamin King2.
I suppose I’ll head out and see if I can track down a replacement hard drive—specifically looking for a Toshiba MK1655GSX (160 GB, 5400 RPM, SATA-II), assuming my luck holds up and one actually exists somewhere.

I honestly don't think you'll be able to track down a 160GB hard drive anymore—they're pretty much relics at this point. You might find a 320GB one instead, but even then, the price is probably going to feel a bit steep.