Hi Samir Al-Othary

Thanks for contacting the community. 

I've mentioned few troubleshooting steps below which would help you to isolate the issue.

First of all, you need to disconnect the AC Adapter, battery and hold the power button down for 20 seconds, to discharge “Static Flea Power”. Then connect AC adapter, battery and restart the system to check if there is any improvement.

Also, it would be a good idea to perform Pre-Boot System Assessment (PSA) diagnostics in order to isolate the issue. To launch the PSA diagnostics, please press and hold the “Fn” key and then press the power button. Please let me know if you get an error and do mention the code as well. Please click http://dell.to/oe1Qg1 for detailed information about PSA diagnostics and error codes.

If the diagnostics pass and no errors are returned, then you may try booting your system in Safe Mode with Networking. For that you need to restart the computer and start tapping the F8 key which would take you to Advanced Boot Option screen. Scroll down to “Safe Mode with Networking” and press enter to boot the computer into Safe Mode. If it works fine in safe mode you can try System Restore and take the system to a prior date when it was working fine. Please click http://dell.to/opfa8C for detailed instructions about system restore.

If the system does not boot in safe mode, please reboot the system in BIOS and check if the hard drive is being detected. Follow below mentioned steps to check the hard drive functionality in BIOS.

1. Restart the computer.
2. As the computer boots, press when the Dell Splash Screen appears.
3. Look for primary hard drive status.
4. Also, press F9 to load default and then press F10 to save the changes and exit.

Please let me know if further help is required. 

Thanks & Regards
Prateek K
#iworkfordell 

For easy access to drivers, manuals and product updates, please visit our Support Site .

Hello Prateek,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I ran the PSA test and got two errors, code 2000-0333 and 2000-0146. As recommended on your support forum, I accessed dell splash screen and restored all default settings and ran the test again and only got one error, the 2000-0146 as follow:

I tried starting the computer on Safe Mode, all I see is a black screen with the words Safe Mode on all four corners and in the middle top I see "Microsoft (R) Windows XP (R) (Build 2600.xpsp_sp3_qfe.120821 - 1630: ServicePack 3)"

I think that my windows version is corrupted but because I lost my CD, I cannot run a recovery.

Plus, I have some important data in my Hard drive, therefore, format is not an option.

Thanks for your help and I await your reply.

Remove the hard drive, mount it in an external case and attach it to a working system by USB.  Copy your data to the working system's hard drive.

You'll then need a new, 2.5" 7 or 9.5 mm hard drive to replace the one you have, which has failed.

You will then need to install Windows on the new drive, it is unrecommended to install Windows XP at this date as it is reaching its end of life in less than a year meaning it will receive no further updates and be extremely vulnerable. See Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 - End of Life April 2014.

This system should support Windows 7 64 bit and it is recommended you have 4-8 GB of Ram installed.

You should consider performing a clean install of Windows 7 on a new hard drive (SSD recommended), see my Windows Reinstallation Guide for instructions:

http://philipyip.wordpress.com/dell-community-forums/

Hi Samir Al-Othary   

In would suggest you to reinstall the operating system and check how it works. In case you do not have the Windows installation disc, you can request for a copy of Windows media from the link mentioned below:

Request backup disc: http://dell.to/XBcVDN

Steps for manual re-installation of windows: http://dell.to/11itER2

Please reply if you have any further questions.

Thanks & Regards
Prateek K
#iworkfordell

For easy access to drivers, manuals and product updates, please visit our Support Site .

If you formatted the faulty drive without replacing it, that's the problem - your hard drive needed to be replaced.

Or have you replaced the drive, and the install isn't working (in which case it could be an issue with the Windows disc or the DVD drive)?

Hello all,

Thanks for the suggestions, I have managed to copy my files from the old hard drive using a docking station. I formatted the hard drive, plugged it in and tried to install Windows 7 on a clean partition but I got the following error "Windows cannot copy files from D:\sources to C:\$windows~LS\Sources. The files may be corrupt or missing" error code: 0x80070017, I ran the diagnostics and got the same 0146 error, does this mean that my hard drive is gone? But I tried installing another operation system and it installed perfectly, the OS I installed is Ubuntu. Am i missing something here?

Thanks,