Consider Spinrite 6.0 to Fix Hard Disk failures

If you are receiving a diagnostics error 1000-0146 it indicates that there is a failure involving the hard disk which has already been detected and was logged. Ususally this is predicated by a 1000-0142 error that explais there's a DST (Device Self Test) failure. Dell's diagnostic utils seem great, but have some pretty non-committal explanations when you actually get down to what specifically has gone wrong and how to correct it. Dell will tell you this means "replace your hard disk." Which translated loosely also means, "You've lost everything that was stored on your hard disk, Bozo, why don't you do backups like you're supposed to?" Well, being a PC tech from the old days, I knew about a product that has saved my bippie more than twice called "Spinrite" by Gibson Research. It's an industrial strength hard disk recovery utility that runs under its own boot. You have to create either a boot diskette or CD or boot from a flash drive, but it's very easy to do and the program comes with the utilities to create a boot diskette or creates an ISO image for burning a boot CD--or will setup your flash drive to boot the product, as well. I went to the Spinrite website and purchased version 6.0 (latest) for $89. I downed it and setup a boot CD (my inspiron has no floppy drive). After installing it I set Spinrite to work at level 5 (thoroughly test every sector of the drive, recover lost data from unreadable sectors, and bring sectors marked as BAD back to full functionality if possible). Three hours later Spinrite reported that it had found 2 bad sectors on my drive, recovered all the data that had been stored in them (WinXP system files), and restored them back to full use. Number of errors still present on my hard drive: ZERO! Ibooted right up without any problem, no blue screens, no argument from the operating system, no gagging performance after it booted. Beautiful! I highly recommend Spinrite 6.0 to anyone considering dumping ther old system or hard disk. Why? For $89 bucks you can set it and walk away. When its done, it's really done. Whn you buy a new PC or replace your hard disk, you still have to deal with installing all the system level drivers for your motherboard, installing all your software, configuring your Outlook email, restoring any backups, customizing your desktop, etc., etc., etc. If Spinrite can't salvage your hard disk, then you'll know you made the right decision and didn't trash or thrash over your machine for no reason. If this sounds like an endorsement for Spinrite, IT IS!! After reading about how many people just bit the bullet and bought a new hard disk from DELL, I had to say my piece about this software. It really does work. Good luck! Spinrite Web Site: www.grc.com