Dell laptop issues

[deb]

My sis brought her Dell laptop to me since she had boot problems. It wouldn't boot into Vista and would go to the repair screen, it wouldn't repair or restore to previous. I also tried these steps without success. She then proceeded to call Dell for some help, the person went through the steps with her on doing a diagnosis to determine if this was a warranty issue (she bought this back in June), according to the technician he said that the hard drive wasn't an issue and for her to find someone to fix the software issue. (I suspected the latest service pack install for generating the problem, but couldn't go in and uninstall that of course).

Now,..... since it wasn't a hardware issue (covered under warranty) and seemed like a software issue (NOT covered under warranty) and she was going to be charged by the company who sold her the unit and also Dell wanted a $250 for a 5 call service or a $69 one time call with no guarantee. I proceeded to insert her Vista disk supplied with the laptop to reinstall Vista overtop to see if that would resolve the issue... well, it went through the whole install process but would hang on the final boot and do nothing. I did this several times, even went into the format to see if the thing would format to do a clean install and it wouldn't format just continued with installation.

So.... I decided to just go with XP to see if that would work,,, I put in MY XP disk (figured that if my XP would install then she could go buy her own version of XP and I'd reinstall that with her own product code). NOT.... the darn thing couldn't find a hard drive period.


HELP!!! this thing is driving me nuts.... remind me to never never never buy a Dell, their service sucks. Why buy service on a warrantied product and then you have to send your product in rather than have a local repair service within their distributors.

[TownBear]

We bought a few laptops at work & the computer guy said there are some models of Dell laptops which have had issues with Vista & they had to roll them back to XP. But Dell is not the only company that has had these issues... blame it on Vista not Dell :)

[sybil]

If you can find out the manufacturer of the hard drive, it wouldn't hurt to run a diagnostic. Most had cd iso's to download and turn into a bootable cd, as there may not be a floppy drive. I would also be tempted to run Memtest86, also available as a cd iso. That way you rule out common hardware failures for yourself.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

[deb]

I can't even get into the computer now.... it never booted far enough into windows to allow me to install anything or even backup her information or files. The diagnostic the Dell guy had my sister do said there were no hard drive problems. Now XP install disk is saying there is no hard drive to access.

I did boot with the Vista disk that is provided by Dell and get to the hard drive partition area that shows 3 partitions... recovery, windows and media.... I tried to format but didn't appear to do a format at all. Now nothing is there to boot to. Nope, no floppy

I don't blame Dell for the software I don't like their lack of free service, you pay a bundle for their equipment but from day one they don't offer complimentary service..... I don't like Vista and will not have it on my system.. I scream everytime I have to look at Bryan's Vista crap. LOL

I want to put XP on sis's computer, she has Vista 64 on her desktop and is regretting it.

No disk came to roll back the system to XP.

[deb]

thanks for the link sybil I'll check that out and see if I can get it with it... either burn a dvd or usb flash

[sybil]

Vista tends to be much more sensitive to any bad ram (been there, done that..........). Out of 4 sticks, 2 had bad blocks (one showed very few, the other a lot). Got those replaced and no problem since then.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=399
Of course, that is only one possibility out of ?many....
I would also probably still test the hdd for myself.

[wingnut31]

My guess is XP doesn't recognize sata harddrives, had the same problem when I went to downgrade my Toshiba laptop to XP, with it there was a switch I had to change the bios, set the mode to compatibility and had no trouble install XP.

Not sure how you do it in Dell.

[sybil]

Good thought, Wingnut. the documentation for the notebook should say how to get into the bios setup. Check the section on harddrives. If you want to change to XP, see if there are XP drivers available.

[deb]

F12 gets me into the BIOS, does it tell me if it's SATA drive?


ok... I am in there and it tells me

Onboard devices list,

Integrated NIC
External USB ports
Media card and 1394
SATA Operation
Module Bay Device
Flash Cache Module

when I open the list and select SATA Operation I see

This field configures the operating mode of the integrated SATA hard drive controller.

ATA = SATA is configured for ATA
AHCI = SATA is configured for AHCI

The factory default is AHCI

[sybil]

Try enabling it to ATA and see if you can install xp. The AHCI is a more advanced mode and that may be why xp isn't seeing a disk (drivers)

[deb]

ok, this really strange.... I changed that setting and put in my XP disk and set the reboot to boot from cd.... then windows vista setup came up and asked for username, password and stuff.. now it's in complete vista mode. Weird... I'm playing around with it to see if it's stable.

thanks for your help and I'll let you know if it's ok.

[deb]

I just rebooted and it's just fine...hunky dory. She lost all she had in there, it looks like a nice clean Vista install... so I'm gonna leave it alone. lol I set up to connect to my router wirelessly and it connected right away... Hey, I'm good and don't know how I'm good. LOL :D

[MacMeat]

Ignorance is bliss.

Go with it. :)

[Peter]

You and your sister should get Macs, PC's seem a little to complicated for the both of you :tongueout :p :D

[Remedy]

http://remedy.graphicsteck.ca/images/j54.gif

[MacMeat]



[deb]

is your little thing supposed to do something?

[MacMeat]

Yes, it's not supposed to fail. :p

[sybil]

:nce3 (both for the notebook and the "little thing"!):cool:

[Groovetube]

xp sp2 should recognize sata fine, I have it on 2 systems with sata.

vista blech. It doesn't have good odds for success.