Dell 1525 Problem

token56

Right so my sister is having problems with here inspiron 1525, came in to me saying it BSOD, and she had turned it off, so didn't get to see the memory dump unfortunately.

Right so on start up it goes to Bios screen then goes to a screen with the usual "Windows Error Recovery" and the options are to
Launch System Recovery(Recommend)
Start up windows normally

so go into System Recovery,it loads, it goes to select keyboard language, select whatever
goes to select operating system to repair, and no operating system shows up and i select local drivers, it then goes out of system repair and back to the Bios screen and then the "Windows Error Recovery" screen, this is a infinite loop,

I have the operating boot cd, to try and do a recovery or reinstall from that,
it goes to "windows is loading files...", it does this then goes to the "Microsoft Corporation loading screen" and goes to a blank screen with a cursor and the CD drive and HDD completes stop and there is no noise from the laptop what so ever, i left it like this for a while (1 hour+) but nothing so i turned it back off.

Ran windows memory diagnostic and it was fine

Did the diaganostic from the boot menu and got an error on the test below
Mememory WCMch Test
Testing 00_004000000h - 00_7F66CFFFh (2034 MB) with 2 CPU(s)
Error was:
Error Code 0146
Msg: Error Code 2000-0146
Msg: Hard Drive 1 - Self Test log contains previous error(s)

Obviously i think it might be the HDD, but i would rather not send it back to Dell and try to fix it myself if possible, anyone have a better idea what the problem might be.

The laptop has one year basic Warrenty with Dell so i'm not sure if a problem like this is covered.

I asked my sister had she downloaded anything recently or done anything with it and she said no. The only programs running at the time were Firefox, MSN, itunes and probably AVG.

Sorry if this is too much detail but i just want to provide as much useful info as possible.

Thanks for any help

silversurfer

One of my in-laws mentioned his Dell 1520 laptop was not working
Giving a black screen at startup etc...
It was showing Error Code 2000-0146

I had a look at it earlier this evening
After a bit of searching tonight, it seems the Hard drive is dying.
I turned on the laptop and pressed F12 to get to the Dell Diagnostics, The hard drive failed SMART test (the short test), error code 0f00:065d (IDE device failed, failed read portion of test.
This error 0f00:065d, also seems to relate to the Hard drive dying.

I'll remove the hard drive later and see if I can rescue any of his files and see about ordering a replacement (about €40 + shipping from Komplett)


Rgds,
s

silversurfer

update, got this working

I removed the suspect Hard drive and put it into a 2.5" Sata external case I had.
I hooked this up to USB on my main desktop and ran anti-virus, which passed.
I then opened up my computer and right clicked on the suspect drive, went to properties and then into tools, I ran the check now for errors
Errors were found and repaired, I checked it again and then did a disk defrag.
Scanned with a western digital diagnostics and it passed.

I then placed it into the laptop and it booted up.
I again ran disk check and then did disk cleanup and it's been working fine since.
I updated the Laptop with the latest Dell files from the website and installed windows updates (including vista SP1).

The laptop must have restarted about 40 or more times due to the various updates and programs I installed. It did not crash once.

I dropped it back to my in-law and he's happy with it and it's running faster than it has in a long while.

NOTE: the hard drive will probably fail in the future, I wouldn't trust it to last since it is a suspect drive. But as the owner had no files on it and doesn't put much on, he's happy to use it until it starts breaking down again. It could last years or fail in the morning. Most likely it'll be fine for a couple of years, but I wouldn't use it for information I wanted to keep.

Rgds,
s