[wannabe1]

Let's leave it right there for the moment. We have a Dell support person on staff here and I'm going to ask him to look in on this topic when he logs in.

I think it's best that he have a look before we go into this much deeper.

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He should be here shortly......

[wannabe1]

He should be here shortly......

[The Admiral]

Hi wkd_chick, welcome to Geeks to Go! I'm just doing some research here, but letting you know I'm reviewing this topic.

Can you tell me what diagnostics you ran, and how you accessed them?

Also, if you are the original owner of the computer, or you know the name or company under which the laptop was purchased, please chat in to Dell technical support and request media for an operating system reinstallation, specifically a Windows XP CD and a Drivers and Utilities CD. I'm not saying we'll have to reinstall the operating system, but you'll end up needing the CD at some point.

Can you please open up the BIOS by tapping <F2> as the laptop starts up, and arrow down to Device Info? You'll see a line that says "Hard Drive", tell me everything on that line.

[wkd_chick]

not sure if I am looking in the right place, I got into bios and I can't find where it says device info. I ran the diagnostics through the boot menu .... F12. I bought the laptop from a friend so I am not the original owner.

[The Admiral]

Let's make sure I'm on the same page. Is your BIOS green and black, or blue and yellow?

Let's try running those diagnostics again. Run the diagnostics through the <F12> menu, and it should get you into the Utility Partition, which is a gray window on a blue screen. Select Custom Test, then find the Hard Drives section. Click the (+) sign next to Hard Drives, then the (+) sign next to your hard drive. Don't worry, there will only be one. Then click on the name of your hard drive again so it is highlighted, and press the Run Tests button in the bottom left corner. This will take a while, but you'll need to sit at your laptop the whole time and watch for any error codes. Please write down any errors you do find and post them back up here.

Good luck!

Edited by The Admiral, 08 November 2008 - 08:56 PM.

[wkd_chick]

hi,
my bios screen is green and black.
I tried to do what you said but the diagnostic test just went straight on, there was no grey window or any option to do a custom test, it just went straight on with it. I will run the whole test and let you know how I get on

[wkd_chick]

actually I feel dumb now, it went through a short test then the gray box came up ...... now testing

[wkd_chick]

hi, I have run the test and everything passed with no errors

[wkd_chick]

please help