A couple months ago I had a problem with my Inspiron 11 not starting up.  I narrowed the problem to the disk drive after testing with a disk drive from another 1100.  The solution that worked then was to reformat the hard drive and reload the OS, drivers, etc.  The system ran fine for a month.

This past weekend the laptop again failed to start up and after the initial screen I received  a disk I/O error message.  I ran the fast diagnostics and using the Utilities/Diagnostics CD was able to run the long diagnostics tests.  The disk passed both tests.  When I try to boot with the XP reinstall CD or Winternals CD, the system will halt on a blank screen after a message that Setup was checking the system configuration.  I removed the hard disk from the laptop and was able to boot off of my Winternals CD.  I replaced the hard drive and Winterals would not load.

Has anyone seen a similar problem?  Do you think the drive is shot.  It is the second drive I have had in this laptop and is only a year old.  The OEM disk lasted 5 years.