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Dodgy laptop DVD Drive & Reinstalling Win XP

  • 26-01-2005 8:25pm
    #1
    simonshortt
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16 ✭


    Hi All,

    I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 and the DVD-RW drive will no longer play any discs, with the exception of the Dell diagnostics disc.

    Dell Tech support have suggested, as it appears to be a software issue, a hard-disc format and re-installing Win XP.

    Now to the question: As I cannot boot windows from the Win XP disc, is there any way to reformat and re-install windows?

    I am out of the country at the moment, so this has been going back and forth via e-mail to Dell. They have effectively said reformat and get lost (or words to that effect!).

    I don't want to fdisk and then be without a pc for ages while they send a new drive (should it turn out to be a hardware problem).

    Anyone any experience with a situation like this?

    I did try system rollback, but windows refuses to do that.

    Thanks for your help.

    By the way, I only have on optical drive, no floppy, but do have access to an external harddisc


Comments

  • #2
    stagolee
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,068 ✭✭✭stagolee


    simonshortt wrote:
    Dell Tech support have suggested, as it appears to be a software issue, a hard-disc format and re-installing Win XP.

    they would say that just to keep their call time down, first rule of dell tech support is claim its a software issue and not dells responsibility.
    check that cd is listed as 1st boot device in bios then switch the laptop on with xp cd in the drive, if this works then you probably have a driver or resource conflict problem so ignore the rest of this post.

    try booting into dos with a 98 boot disc and see if the drive works with generic dos drivers (make sure you use a cd to test it not a dvd)again could mean a driver problem no need to reinstall winders

    if you can get it to work with dos drivers and want to reinstall here is what i would do, i cant be very specific cos im in work and im meant to be working so youl have to look up how to do this stuff yerself if you decide to go down this route(please look up a step by step guide on the net for each step and read the doc on the cloning program to make sure it can backup and restore your primary partition).
    1.test that you can boot fron external hdd
    2. make sure external hdd has a large enough space on it to hold a clone of the primary partition of your laptop
    3.get a hdd cloning program(cant think of one now but theres a few out there)
    4.clone primary partition to external hdd
    5.format primary partition
    6.check that cd is listed as 1st boot device in bios and boot to windows cd
    7.install windows if it dosent work restore the backed up primary partition from external hdd


  • #3
    simonshortt
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16 ✭simonshortt


    Thanks for the response. managed to get hold of an external dvd drive and refrmatted and re-installed windows. All works fine now except the DVD drive. So it IS a hardware fault. Thanks Dell!

    Another long and tedious phone call coming up methinks.


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