Problems

Question

The hard drive was bad in one of my computers so Dell sent out a new one, which i replaced and it was working . First I was thinking perhaps the CD Rom went out and now i am thinking the hard drive was faulty. Any suggestions?

osprey4 · Answer

I don't understand your question. Your hard drive went bad and you replaced it. Ok, so are you having problems now or did you solve the problem with a new hard drive?

osprey4 · Answer

Ok, good point. Your diagnostic partition is gone and obviously you can't run from the CD drive. Do you have just the one drive? Also, would you please post the model of your system and drive(s)?

osprey4 · Answer

Ok, try this. With your Office disc (either one) in the drive, run the Dell diagnostics on the CD drive.

osprey4 · Answer

Ok, hard to diagnose things by remote control. It might be worth grabbing another CD drive just to diagnose the other one. You can always return it. Just remember to set the jmper to cable select and turn the drive ON in the BIOS.

DebFromLodi · Answer

The computer is at my daughter's house. I will go over there later today and get the model number. Nothing happens when i try to boot into safe mode. It just boots up into normal mode. I will get the info for you later this morning. Thanks

DebFromLodi · Answer

Dimension 4400 windows xp. Only one cd drive. After I put the new hard drive in, i put the Dell CD and it reinstalled the operating system. Everything was working fine. I also installed software for PacBell DSL. That worked perfect as well. The reason i am wondering if it could be a faulty hard drive is that i am not able to boot into safe mode. That just seemed a little strange to me. I am afraid to try to reformat the drive if the CD Rom is the problem.

DebFromLodi · Answer

OK how do i do that?

osprey4 · Answer

What happens when you try to boot to safe mode? Also, please post the model of your CD drive.

DebFromLodi · Answer

Yes I replaced the hard drive and it was working fine. Then I tried to install Office and it would only install part way then said an unknown error occurred.  So I tried to get into safe mode to install office that way, but it will not boot into safe mode and i am wondering if the hard drive could be faulty. Sorry if i was not clear before. Also I tried to install office from 2 different versions: 2007 first then office 2000 but the same thing happened with both CD's.

osprey4 · Answer

Deb:   It's about $20 to swap out that drive, which would be my inclination at this point. For a few bucks more, you could make it a DVD burner.

DebFromLodi · Answer

OK it is a lite-on LTN486 48x max cd rom

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