Dropped Dell Inspiron 1501

Evil-p

Hi guys,

I hope someone can advise. I dropped my 2.5 year old Dell Inspiron 1501 this morning onto a wooden floor. Now the laptop won't advance past the initial start up screen. It just shows a blue screen after. I have removed the hard drive and there is no obvious signs of damage though I suspect it is damaged due the the clicking noise the laptop is making when on and the absense of the normal spinning sound.

So, has anyone experienced this and successfully replaced the hard drive? I'm not worried about backing up as i have always backed up anything important onto an external hard drive. Also it doesn't sound like the usual fan noise is kicking in so could i have 2 problems. I have found a replacement hard drive on line for £75 pounds from a reputable website. I just don't want to bother when i could potentially have several problems going on!

Any feedback appreciated!

Thanks!

Slunk

Exact same thing happened to me. Dropped it off the sofa. The hard drive was fooked. Left it in with Pc Clinic in the Ilac Centre and they replaced the HD for 119 I htink it was. Most other palces were looking for 160-190 euro. Think they have shops or stands in Dundrum & Swords.

Also, I tried opening it up myself and having a look but im not that good with things like that, couldnt see much but kinda dislodged the dvd drive while i was at it. Wasnt worth the risk. HD was a 160gb so was better to leave it in and have it done properly. They will try and save as much as they can from your old HD too.

ttm

Just paid 70euro for a 250GB sata laptop drive in a bricks and mortar shop so 75quid online is a rip off. I wouldn't have paid the 70euro but I was in a hurry to get something fixed for a mate.

Just replace the HDD press F12 on bootup so you can boot off the CD/DVD and have the restore disk in the drive. Once thats done run the Dell drivers disk and it will tell you all the drivers you need to install.

If the old disk still spins up you might get some data off it so get a mate to stick it in a desktop system and see if he can copy of your data.

Slunk

Dell dont give you a disk to boot from CD drive.

Alanstrainor

You can pick up a 320Gb drive on amazon for 60 quid delivered. That's all you need, and putting it in is a piece of cake. I wouldn't bother getting someone else to do it tbh.
It sounds like a HD problem, but you could download ubuntu and put it on a cd. Then you could try to boot from the cd drive to make sure it works.

ED E

500GB for €90 from Elara, job done:) Re-install is easy.