Given the symptom and age of the system, it's likely the hard drive is failing. To confirm, press F12 at powerup, choose Diagnostics from the menu, and load the Dell diagnostics. Let the quick test run, and then do the extended hard drive test (set aside 90-120 min).
Thank you for your suggestion. I did go thru a quick test run on some items, but don't remember if I ran the extended hard drive test. I will try that tonight.
It's a good thing we just finished backing up all of our documents and files twice, once onto an external Maxtor hard drive and once onto a CD and/or thumb drive.
Is this a common occurrence with these models? We've not had such issues before.
By the way, is there any way to freeze that blue screen so I can read the exact error that pops up?
I'm going to assume that you think I can boot up the laptop in order to check the event viewer. Unfortunately, I never get Windows up and running. In my intial posting, I neglected to mention that I end up in an endless circle of restarts. When I get the intiial screen that allows me to select one way to bring up Windows, it doesn't matter which one I select. Each time, as Windows tries to come up, a blue screen flashes across so quickly that I can't make out the error info. After that I end up right back at the screen that indicates some hardware or software may not have been installed properly, etc.
The only way out is to power the machine down by holding the power button or to press F2 for setup or F12 for diagnostics.
Check the event viewer (start-run-eventvwr.msc) to see if it was recorded.
Hard drives -- despite all the progress in capacity - still have a design life of five years, and given the harder life led by mobile drives, many will fail earlier than that.
ejn63
9 Legend
•
87.5K Posts
1
July 9th, 2009 11:00
Given the symptom and age of the system, it's likely the hard drive is failing. To confirm, press F12 at powerup, choose Diagnostics from the menu, and load the Dell diagnostics. Let the quick test run, and then do the extended hard drive test (set aside 90-120 min).
vkova
4 Posts
0
July 9th, 2009 12:00
Thank you for your suggestion. I did go thru a quick test run on some items, but don't remember if I ran the extended hard drive test. I will try that tonight.
It's a good thing we just finished backing up all of our documents and files twice, once onto an external Maxtor hard drive and once onto a CD and/or thumb drive.
Is this a common occurrence with these models? We've not had such issues before.
By the way, is there any way to freeze that blue screen so I can read the exact error that pops up?
vkova
4 Posts
0
July 9th, 2009 13:00
I'm going to assume that you think I can boot up the laptop in order to check the event viewer. Unfortunately, I never get Windows up and running. In my intial posting, I neglected to mention that I end up in an endless circle of restarts. When I get the intiial screen that allows me to select one way to bring up Windows, it doesn't matter which one I select. Each time, as Windows tries to come up, a blue screen flashes across so quickly that I can't make out the error info. After that I end up right back at the screen that indicates some hardware or software may not have been installed properly, etc.
The only way out is to power the machine down by holding the power button or to press F2 for setup or F12 for diagnostics.
ejn63
9 Legend
•
87.5K Posts
0
July 9th, 2009 13:00
Check the event viewer (start-run-eventvwr.msc) to see if it was recorded.
Hard drives -- despite all the progress in capacity - still have a design life of five years, and given the harder life led by mobile drives, many will fail earlier than that.