Computer died...again

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My dell laptop has officially died for the last time. Went to boot it up and it wouldn't even boot. Something about something in the data store being bad. I'd have to get it out and turn it on to figure out exactly what.

I tried to repair it using the boot disc, but that didn't even work, so I figure it's too far gone.

I just went and bought a different laptop. I have an HP laptop now. Set me back $550 but I can pay that off little by little on my credit card until the end of June when the full payment would be due.

At least I won't be putting up with random gremlins like a spastic cursor, blue screens once a week or so, and Windows and Firefox refusing to update for some strange reason.

ETA: Back last winter when I thought the laptop was kaputt beyond hope, somebody suggested Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe the hard drive. I downloaded that, burned the ISO file to a CD, and am running it on the old machine now. Should that work, I think I'll donate the laptop to my dad for his games he likes to play.

[Whiskey]

My dell laptop has officially died for the last time. Went to boot it up and it wouldn't even boot. Something about something in the data store being bad. I'd have to get it out and turn it on to figure out exactly what.

I tried to repair it using the boot disc, but that didn't even work, so I figure it's too far gone.

I just went and bought a different laptop. I have an HP laptop now. Set me back $550 but I can pay that off little by little on my credit card until the end of June when the full payment would be due.

At least I won't be putting up with random gremlins like a spastic cursor, blue screens once a week or so, and Windows and Firefox refusing to update for some strange reason.

ETA: Back last winter when I thought the laptop was kaputt beyond hope, somebody suggested Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe the hard drive. I downloaded that, burned the ISO file to a CD, and am running it on the old machine now. Should that work, I think I'll donate the laptop to my dad for his games he likes to play.

I can't do laptops. for 550$ I could have a pretty wicked desktop set up. I piece my stuff together though, so I pay considerably less. DBAN should fix your problem if its data corruption or something. My registry went foul a while back and DBAN set it all straight.

[Amadan]

Sorry if I'm butting in or "teaching people to suck eggs" so to speak. As a noob to the forums I hope you'll forgive me...

In my experience the best way to test if it's hardware or software is to use an Ubuntu live CD (or other flavour if you wish).

If the machine boots fine then it's usually either software or the HDD/Memory, if it still doesn't boot the machine is gubbed (or has a hardware fault anyway).

The best way I've found of testing hardware is using a disk called Hirens. It has a number of tools including hard drive repair tools and of course memtest.

If it does boot ok then the a full reinstall is usually the most sure fire way to get the machine up and running. Use the partition editor in Ubuntu (it's just a program called gparted but renamed) to rebuild the mbr (i think it's in the tools menu) on the hdd and create a new partition/partitions (Some people prefer to have an OS and a data partition etc - note if you are using dell recovery disks instead of the usual Dell OS disk and drivers/Application disks it'll setup the partitions automatically to reinstate the utilities and recovery partitions anyway) on the drive then boot from the install cd/recovery disks and follow the normal procedure.

The difference between using GParted and DBAN is whilst DBAN is a data destruction tool that overwrites the HDD a number of times with random data (imho unnecessary unless you are giving the machine away to people you wouldn't trust with any data that may have been on your HDD), GParted is a partition management tool along the lines of Partition Magic and therefore much much quicker / kinder to your drive if all you need to do is a format/repartition for an OS reinstall.

NB: If you've lost your Dell CDs or they don't seem to be working any Windows disk of the right version (ie XP Home / XP Pro / Vista etc) will install and accept the key on the Microsoft COA (the label on the bottom of the machine - sometimes under the battery on Dells). Most Vista disks are especially helpful as you are just click next where it asks for a key, select the version you actually need (instead of the version the disk is coded for) and then enter the key and activate with MS once the install is completed. Unfortunately the only Win7 disks that seem to do this are RTP disks (which are like gold dust).

You can then find the drivers on Dells website under support, using your serial number (service tag).

[underemployeed]

Ah, i sort of miss my dell, I pawned it off on my brother who broke the screen, and power adaptor while I bougth a new laptop.

The really nice thing is I had it setup to quad-boot so when windows decided to crap out which happened decent enough. I could switch to ubuntu, server 08, or dos in which I would launch ghost and repair my windows XP

I second the trying of ubuntu, which would also allow you to maybe access the drive if the MBR or just windows is sucking.