ipalindromei
Junior Member
Hello everyone,
A little help from the Anandtech community? =) Sorry for the rather lengthy post, but I wanted to be detailed:
I'm trying to get a friend's Dell Inspirion 8100 back up and running again. I reinstalled Windows XP Home, installed Norton Systemworks, and started a defrag on the C drive. Then I went to bed. The next morning, the laptop had an error message. Regrettably, I did not copy it down, but it said something to the effect that Windows had shut down because of a "bad memory dump." It didn't seem particularly serious, so I rebooted the machine.
After the reboot, I got an error message, indicating that the drive was no longer readable. So I basically repeated the reinstall procedure - Windows, Norton systemworks, patches, etc. And I ran another defrag. Got the same error message in the morning and rebooted but I got a whole new response: there is now a persistent error message indicating that neither the hard drive nor the DVD-ROM drive can be found. The BIOS indicates the same thing.
Upon startup, I can hear the DVD-ROM powering up. It quickly spins down shortly after the Dell splash screen appears. The hard drive also sounds like it's powering up, but I don't hear any other activity (i.e. no reads/writes).
I have physically removed both of the drives in question to see if the connectors were either burnt or damaged. They look fine. I have also partially disassembled the laptop to inspect the motherboard. I don't smell any burnt odors or see any damage on the motherboard in general, or at the hard drive and DVD-ROM connectors in particular. Everything else (keyboard, display, sound, etc.) appears to be functioning properly.
I also tried removing the hard drive caddy and booting with only the optical drive in place, but I get the same error message, even when I remove the hard drive from the boot-up sequence entirely via the BIOS.
So I'm totally stumped. I can see two possibilities here:
1) Something I can't see or smell burned out on the motherboard.
2) The hard drive is bad, and it is somehow impairing boot up, even when it's removed. I was going to try replacing it today, but one of the screws on the caddy got stripped, so I need to order a new caddy first.
Any ideas as to what's going on? I'd really, really appreciate your guys' help here.
Many thanks,
Ipalindromei
A little help from the Anandtech community? =) Sorry for the rather lengthy post, but I wanted to be detailed:
I'm trying to get a friend's Dell Inspirion 8100 back up and running again. I reinstalled Windows XP Home, installed Norton Systemworks, and started a defrag on the C drive. Then I went to bed. The next morning, the laptop had an error message. Regrettably, I did not copy it down, but it said something to the effect that Windows had shut down because of a "bad memory dump." It didn't seem particularly serious, so I rebooted the machine.
After the reboot, I got an error message, indicating that the drive was no longer readable. So I basically repeated the reinstall procedure - Windows, Norton systemworks, patches, etc. And I ran another defrag. Got the same error message in the morning and rebooted but I got a whole new response: there is now a persistent error message indicating that neither the hard drive nor the DVD-ROM drive can be found. The BIOS indicates the same thing.
Upon startup, I can hear the DVD-ROM powering up. It quickly spins down shortly after the Dell splash screen appears. The hard drive also sounds like it's powering up, but I don't hear any other activity (i.e. no reads/writes).
I have physically removed both of the drives in question to see if the connectors were either burnt or damaged. They look fine. I have also partially disassembled the laptop to inspect the motherboard. I don't smell any burnt odors or see any damage on the motherboard in general, or at the hard drive and DVD-ROM connectors in particular. Everything else (keyboard, display, sound, etc.) appears to be functioning properly.
I also tried removing the hard drive caddy and booting with only the optical drive in place, but I get the same error message, even when I remove the hard drive from the boot-up sequence entirely via the BIOS.
So I'm totally stumped. I can see two possibilities here:
1) Something I can't see or smell burned out on the motherboard.
2) The hard drive is bad, and it is somehow impairing boot up, even when it's removed. I was going to try replacing it today, but one of the screws on the caddy got stripped, so I need to order a new caddy first.
Any ideas as to what's going on? I'd really, really appreciate your guys' help here.
Many thanks,
Ipalindromei
