sounds like a bad hdd.

if you are still within warranty, contact dell.

Unfortunately, the warranty has expired.  Help from anyone would be appreciated in resolving these issues.

You need to either replace the hard drive, it could be dead, or the IDE controller is bad. If you can install the drive in another notebook, or install a new known good hardrive in your notebook, and see if it works or not that would give you the answer. Bad HDD or bad controller.