Notebook Inspiron 6000 HDD drive error!

Question

About a month or so ago I recieved this error while turning on my laptop. I pressed the power button to turn it back off and then turned it back on again to fbe greeted again by the same message. Thinking 'what the?' since my computer was only a little over a year old, I restarted again but went into my computer's BIOS. From there I disabled the HDD drive from starting, restarted my computer, then enabled the HDD drive again and my computer started up and worked fine just as before. I knew there must be something wrong with my computer because of this error but since it didn't do anything major to my computer I ignored it since I wasn't sure what to do.   About 3-4 days ago I started my laptop and a message popped up in the lower right hand corner of my screen near the system tray (after I had logged onto my accnt on the computer) informing me that both my 'rundll32.exe' and 'msmsgs.exe' files were corrupt. I had no choice but to use my computer for what I needed it for and then left it on so that when I had the time I could look up the issue online and fix it. The only problem is I let my mom use my laptop to print some legal documents out and she turned it off not knowing there was a problem with it.   So a day after it had been shutdown I tried to start it back up. The computer failed to boot windows and had stopped on the screen before which reads, 'Loading PBR... done' and a blue bar with www.dell.com running on the top of the screen. That is when I contacted Microsoft since Windows XP wouldn't start though through the BIOS setup I could run a diagnostic scan on my computer (which runs on Windows 95) and it said everything on my laptop was fine. Microsoft sent an e-mail back saying since the manufacturer had installed the software before I even got the machine the manufacturer would be my primary source for support.   Today I got home from work, finally having some time to work on my computer issue again, I crossed my fingers and started up my computer hoping that the problem had been temporarily by the machine so I could fix the rundll32.exe and msmsgs.exe problems and look into the HDD drive one, but unfortunately it has only gotten worse. Now, after I am asked for my BIOS password, the HDD drive error pops up before the 'Loading PBR... done' screen is able to load and even after disabling and enabling the HDD drive several times it is still messed up.   I put this issue in the hands of the community since both Dell and MIcrosoft charge money for customer support after expired warranties, and if possible, I would like a way to keep all of the information stored on my hard drive because this wouldn't be the first catastrophic failure in a machine I had purchased which Microsoft had touched in some way.   Thanks

ejn63 · Answer

Start with the Dell diagnostics on the hard drive. F12 at bootup.

What you're going to need to do is buy an external USB 2.0 EIDE drive case, move the drive to it, and attach it to a working system to copy your data. Once that's done you can either wipe out the drive (assuming it passes the diags) and reload Windows, or continue to try troubleshooting it.

Haxxorz87 · Answer

I already ran the diagnostics from the F12 bootup and it didn't find anything wrong with my computer.   I have an external had drive. How do I transfer my data to it (using BIOS since it wont boot to windows) so I dont lose my information?

ejn63 · Answer

It isn't the external drive you need. What you need is a working system - mount the drive in an external case, and attach it to a working system by USB. Then copy your data files.

Haxxorz87 · Answer

If possible I'd like to not spend any money fixing my problem while not losing the info on my hard drive, so would it be possible for you to loan me the external USB case? :smileysad:

Dutchknowitall · Answer

I hope this works, cause i've made a dell forum acount specially for you ;)

First download and burn the freeware: Ubuntu 7.10 Gnome.

This works with a live-CD so you don't have to install it, just boot it as an OS from the CD.

You can connect to your network from that CD and copy your files to internet, USB, or network.

You may have problems with NTFS, but maybe that Gparted (Gnome's partition manager) can help you with it, otherwise it might be in /media/sda .

Hope you find it ;)

Storage, Drives & Media

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