Hi, I am writing to say I have the same problem.

I have a Latitude C810, it crashed down suddenly without any warning message yesterday. I tried to start up from floppy but with no success. The only left chance seems to be reformatting. But if it's like what Marty55 said, it would probably also not work in my case. What can I do now?

I'd like to know additionally if there might still be a slight hope of recovering some data in the crashed hard disk.

Thanks a lot.

Lu

 

Message Edited by lu_munich on 07-18-2004 01:47 PM

In both cases, a surface scan with the Dell diagnostics (on a CD that came with your system) is in order.

Whether you can recover anything depends on the extent of the damage, and on your wallet (professional data recovery runs into the thousands of dollars for a moderate size drive).

 

Thanks a lot for the reply.

Yet what shall I do when I cannot run the laptop at all now? Could you give more detailed instructions?

Thank you, ejn63.
I will try that.

The simple fact for both of you is the HDD is dying and needs to be replaced. So back up your files and buy a new drive.

Hi, thanks for the tip.

My laptop is still within 3-year-guarantee period. Shall I send the laptop back to DELL in this case?

Call Dell tech support and jump through the hoops and they will send you a new/refurbished HDD. You will have to install it which is very easy, 1 screw to to get the HDD carrier out and 2 screws to remove the locking part from the HDD and removing the pin adapter from the old drive and installing it on the new drive. You will then need to install the OS, drivers and all your programs but you would need to do this even if you did send it back to Dell. By the way even if you decide to send it in you still need to call first and get a OK to send it in. Otherwise Dell will just send it back to you NOT fixed and probably unopened.