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new drive won't load windows from Dell recovery flash.
I installed my new Seagate 1T (under warranty) that suffered from the infamous ""no hard drive detected" communication failure between the drive and the cable ,and started loading the included "Dell Mentor media" recovery media flash drive. Halfway through the installation of Windows I get the "Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation." But the computer won't restart the installation, and after booting to the first "Windows Admin sign in" screen it gives me "Your account has been disabled. Please see your system administrator" . The drive won't reinstall Windows, it won't boot from my recovery flash drive, it just sits there like the useless POS that Dell seems to have become lately. I have an email in to tech support, but with it being a weekend it's not likely I'm going to get any answers from them. Anyone have any ideas besides the typical "you did something wrong" that someone's going to spew out? My drive failed intermittently SIX TIMES before it was replaced, and now Dell's "fix" broke the new one?
ejn63
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February 11th, 2017 07:00
It would help to know which model (i.e., XPS9550, Inspiron N5110, etc.) you have but it sounds like the hard drive may not have been the problem - rather it sounds more like a bad mainboard.
Maxsdad53
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February 11th, 2017 14:00
It's an Inspiron 3650 desktop. And I'm not sure where your confusion comes from, but the problem was definitely a data transfer (communication) problem between the hard drive and the cable, hence Dell's recommendation to replace both. It's a common problem among Seagate drive issues and has been for several years now. The SECOND problem (what I requested help about) was the drive's failure to correctly load the supplied Windows. There was never any indication that a problem existed with the mother board or any other component. A response I received from Dell tech assistance 30 minutes ago stated "our depot faced an issue where, the operating system installed in the hard drive was not completed and hence they have sent you a USB flash drive with Windows to reinstall Windows", so it appears the NEW drive was shipped with a known error and they "hoped" it might magically fix itself. I guess I was supposed to be able to load something they weren't able to. Does anyone from DELL have any suggestions?
ejn63
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February 12th, 2017 04:00
Run a full Dell diagnostic on the hard drive (f12 at powerup) - and NOT just the quick 10-minute test. Do the full surface scan - this will take up to several hours. Alternatively, use the Seagate SeaTools diagnostic to do the same thing. Once the hard drive has a clean bill of health, proceed:
Download a fresh copy of Windows 10 and see if it'll install. It would be better to use a different flash drive than the one you've had fail to install as well.
www.microsoft.com/.../windows10
If that doesn't work, it reverts to the possibility that there's an issue with the mainboard - whether or not the hard drive was actually faulty. Yes, the repair depot should have completed the repair and installation rather than sending a flash drive to you, but if you can't get a clean copy of Windows 10 to install, there's something other than just the hard drive at fault.