laptop dead

charlie792

apologies as im posting this from my phone i cant do paragraphs. My laptop was working this morning however trying to boot it up again after lunch is getting nowhere - it comes up with the very first dell screen but after that it just goes blank. Can get into the bios and diagnostics but thats it. Had a previous hard drive error (had that for about 2 years) so think it could well be thats gone. The bios is also showing "media test faliure" for the onboard nic - not sure what that is. Is the harddrive likely to be totally dead in which case or is there any clever ways of attempting to recover some of the data (not essential as most backed up)

closed

most likely hd dead, see if it visible in bios, and try diagnostics, or fitting to a usb caddy attached to another machine

charlie792

it still appears in the list for the bios but when selecting to boot from it nothing happens -left it for half hour or so and still nothing - can hear noise in the laptop like something is happening but still a totally blank screen

Jimbobble

Hi charlie792,

Exact same thing has happened to me on my Dell laptop today!
Just the first Dell screen loads and then it's a blank screen but making a noise as if something is happening...
I had an error message that said something about a start up or log on failure (I can't remember exactly what it said!) and I clicked ok but nothing happened!
Have you had any luck yet? If so, please could you let me know how you resolved the problem, I'd really appreciate it! Thanks

HO87

Jimbobble wrote: »

Hi charlie792,

Exact same thing has happened to me on my Dell laptop today!
Just the first Dell screen loads and then it's a blank screen but making a noise as if something is happening...
I had an error message that said something about a start up or log on failure (I can't remember exactly what it said!) and I clicked ok but nothing happened!
Have you had any luck yet? If so, please could you let me know how you resolved the problem, I'd really appreciate it! Thanks

Hi Jimbobble

Please start your own thread regarding your issue - it will become very confusing trying to deal with two problems that whilst similar at the outset may be down to entirely different problems.

Jimbobble

Ok,will do - sorry, it's the first time I've posted!

Jimbobble

Hi charlie792,

I don't know if your using Windows Vista but if so, here's a link to the Dell website that I found useful in resolving my issue...

Best of luck!

charlie792

Well wanted to update on this. Last night stripped the laptop down, everything internally looks ok, switched in a HD from another laptop and it goes to boot - starts loading windows and then goes to the repair screen to automatically fix issues, I didnt go any further with this as I didnt want to mess up the other HD but I think this pretty much points to the fact that mines gone and it cant be the motherboard. Using another laptop temporarily until I can get hold of my sisters old laptop and then Ill try swapping the HD from that over into mine as I know its compatible