Hi John,
Any chance you may have dropped that G56 laptop? Or possibly loaned it to a friend, family-member, co-worker, etc.? Reason I ask is I had a Client drop one about 2 yrs. ago, and he wouldn't spend the money for parts; about $300, so there it sits on my triage shelf waiting for me to have parts money to fix it and give it back to him for free. He already replaced the laptop with a new All-in-one PC last month, so I think he's done waiting.
If you don't have drop damage to electronics (
RAM, Hard Drive, Motherboard, Video card/chip), you can take a look at some repair methods I suggest in this post, at
POST #14 from this morning here:
Have You Used Any Of The W 10 Recovery options? So, it's important to test your hardware for this sort of thing prior to running all of these various software repairs. Also, be aware that Microsoft has what they call a
"Tuesday-weekly-push update", and about once a month I get 3 or 4 calls from Clients who tell me that some item or items disappear, freeze, lag, hang-up, or just plain stop working the day prior the MS Windows update.
Bear in mind that failed hardware often mimics the symptoms of scrambled or broken software, so the only way to test this is to run a suite of hardware tests, primarily using Linux tools that computer techs use. Some Windows tools are available such as
SPECCY free from piriform.com, however, they are not as conclusive as the Linux tools tests are.
When folks try the various software repair methods such as Driver uninstall/reinstall, System Restore, Windows Reinstall from factory Recovery Disks, Windows Reset, or any of the in-place methods talked about by holdum in that same post #14 above, they don't always get positive results since they never bothered to test their hardware first for what I call a
"Coincidental Hardware Failure", or they didn't know that they even needed to do that.
If you don't feel like becoming a computer expert, just run the software repairs mentioned and see if you can fix things. If you can't there's a good chance you have a difficult software repair that most methods can't correct, a
CHF (
Coincidental
Hardware
Failure), or other hardware related problem. At that point you'll either have to take your laptop into your local repair shop and get it looked at with an estimate of repair cost in writing, or chuck the laptop or toss it in the attic.
Older computers with Win7 or Win8x on them are more likely to fail due to the stress of the W10 upgrade process itself; if there are any weak hardware components, they will often fail during or immediately after the W10 upgrade. I see this on a regular basis with Clients upgrading to the new W10.
I'll post a photo when I get time of what that G56 looks like after the drop.
Oh, by the way, HP
WILL fix your laptop for you; but you have to mail it to them on your nickel (about $60), and these days they charge about $250-$300 to do so. Once repaired, they will return ship it to you at no cost to you. Toshiba, Dell, Acer, and the other laptop guys are all about the same price range. You just didn't ask the right question or talk to the right Tech. Often you have to ask to speak to a
"Level 2 or Level 3 Tech", but that phone call is also going to cost you money, about $39-$159. All these costs are of course the pricing since your laptop has expired from the 1 year free-fix factory warranty period. This is also why computer retailers attempt to sell you Extended Warranty plans; at a cost of 10% per year additional of warranty coverage when you buy your laptop either from a brick-and-mortar store or online. For example, a $500 laptop costs about $150-$160 U.S. to get a 3 year extended warranty on. You'll notice if you are astute, that that cost is substantially less than the out-of-warranty repair cost. Lastly, most laptop makers these days
*with the exception of Dell*, design their laptops to fail from 1 year+1 day to 3 yrs-1 day.
Hope that gives you some insight on various repair avenues and strategies.
Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
