Internal Hard Disk Not Found -Dell Inspiron 15 3542 laptop

Hi Amy,

Thanks for posting.

Please run a diagnostics test either by pressing F12 at startup, or use Dell Support Assist make a note of any error messages, and contact Dell Tech Support for further troubleshooting and possible resolution.  You can contact Tech Support at 1-800-624-9896 or 1-800-288-4410, or you can initiate a chat session http://dell.to/2v4snVm

Hi Robert,

I called support. I was on the call 30min, 25 of that on "hold". I was asked a series of questions, things I had already checked and explained to tech. While on hold the second time there was loud laughter and talking right into the phone. Not exactly working, forget to push mute??! If they have a script just say it and be done, don't put me on hold.

Finally they instructed me to unscrew the underside panel to get to my hard drive then stopped and said it is very delicate why don't you mail your laptop to the Denver center to do it. They asked for my mailing address at the beginning of the call. Apparently this was so they could later say they will mail me a box to ship it to Denver. I've read from several people on here that that is a dead end. I've only had the laptop for 1.5 yrs. This is terrible!

Is there a U.S. based tech support call center? That was really unprofessional, doesn't make me feel good about my purchase or Dell as a company.

I agree, a drive only lasting for 1.5 years is not normal, unless it had been used heavily.

If you are running Win 10, many folks have had problems with drives disappearing.  We don't know exactly why and there may be more than one reason.

Can you boot to external media, such as an Install or Recovery USB drive?  

There are two versions of this system - one has a 2.5" conventional hard drive, and the other has a 32G embedded flash drive (and no separate hard drive).

Are you sure about this?  The specs say it has one 2.5 inch drive.  That drive supports Intel Smart Response Technology, which would need a small SSD. like a 32 GB one.  The combination of the two would only show as one drive in Disk Management.

Maybe you are looking at something I did not find..

Thanks for the response Saltgrass. How would I boot to external media?

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately I think my warranty has expired...

Hmm, so they make a cheap quality product anticipating a large volume of calls from people having problems with the poorly made product and so outsource the call center. Whatever the cost, seems like a quality made product to start with would cut down on problem calls and increase a positive reputation and encourage repeat customers. This was my first experience with Dell, I will be looking to other brands in the future.

You boot to external media by having such a device.  It needs to be plugged in or loaded prior to booting or restarting.  It will not be recognized if you wait until after the initial boot.

During boot, use the F12 option to bring up a Boot Device Menu and choose the UEFI version of the media from there.  If your system is set for secure boot it will only see the UEFI version, I assume.

If you system does not even recognize the drive in the Bios, it may not help to use the Install media.  But if you decide to try a different drive, you will need to boot to it to load the new install.

ejn63 may be correct as to your configuration, but I thought such a system would only be used for a tablet type device.  I certainly could be wrong.  If it is bad and mounted on the motherboard, enj63's comments should be followed.

Since you seem to be able to access a 2.5 inch drive, you could remove it for a couple of boots while you practice booting the external media and then replace it and make sure the bios shows it as primary boot device.

Oh, one other thing,  You could try setting the SATA controller in the Bios to AHCI, which would stop the 32 GB drive from being an acceleration drive..

Thanks Saltgrass. The SATA is already set to AHCI. I put in my USB flash drive and set it as boot option #1. (I'm not able to find my recovery disc.) I loaded defaults and saved. I still get the same error message.

Can I download recovery software to my flash drive from another computer and try on my computer?

If it was already at AHCI then put it to RAID.  That should have been the original setting...

It may not work but doesn't hurt to try..