thr pre boot system assessment was complete. no diagnostic utility partition identified. please select OK to reboot your system. What does that mean will I lose the data on my hard drive???

Hi,

Welcome to the Community. It looks like the Utility partiton that holds the diagnostics is missing or deleted. So you cannot run diagnostics on your computer using the utility partiton, but you can run the diagnotics using the Drivers and Utilities CD or Resource CD. This does not mean you have lost any data off your hard drive. Reboot means to restart your computer.

Thank you

Royan

Hello. Royan answered your question, but I see from your other thread last night that you have some questions about the testing process, so if it's okay I would like to offer some additional explanation.

Your computer originally had two different sets of diagnostics utilities:

1. The Pre-boot System Assessment tests (PSA tests). They are called pre-boot because they run before the computer boots up Windows (or whatever operating system you have).  

2. The Dell Diagnostics Utility. A different set of tests that Dell puts on a hidden partition on the hard drive. If the hard drive has been wiped clean or has been replaced then the partition will be missing.  

The only thing the diagnostic utilities do is test the hardware of the computer. They do not make any changes to the computer and have no effect at all on your data. What happened was that you ran the PSA tests but then the computer could not continue  with the Dell Diagnostics tests because it could not find the partition. Because the computer could not run any more tests, it asked you if it was okay to re-boot in order to get out of the tests and back into Windows (or whatever operating system you have).  

Hi, 

My laptop starts in the Pre-boot System Assessment everytime I start it up. How do I turn it off?

This is out of my area, but my guess is that you have configured the BIOS to boot into the diagnostics at startup. I suggest that you post a question on the Laptop General Hardware discussion board. Supply the model name of your laptop, and ask how to get into the BIOS and set it to boot to Windows.

en.community.dell.com/.../3518.aspx

Thanks for the reply. I posted the question on the laptop general discussion board.