Topic: Laptop Issues

[Canuck]

A friend of mine has a DELL Inspiron 2200, which they dropped and no longer functions.

When the comptuer starts up, I get a black/gray screen with the following text.

I am recieving this error message before the BIOS is loaded up: "The Device in the system modular bay cannot be identified. It may not be completely inserted or may have some other problem. Please read and complete the following steps.

1. Press the device completely and firmly into the bay.

2. Press the ESC-key -- wait for the system to power down.

3. Press the power button to retry detecting the device."



Dell has some diagnostic tools built in, and I ran some. The hard drive failed on the "Read Test", but passed on the others.

I got to the screen where it allows you to select boot options, and I tried to boot from the CD (I had an exe for a DOS based hard drive utility I wanted to run), and it spit out a whole bunch of errors. mdisk(0)utility(1) <- something like that, and it wouldnt boot to a command prompt.  At one point it booted into Windows (Black screen with a windows logo - blue bar (Win XP Pro)), and it came to a blue screen of death.

Is it the hard drive? I dont know how to reset the dvd/cd drive, not sure if thats an issue?

Suggestions?

Thanks

[KnuckleBuckett]

Sounds like at least a partial HDD head failure.  Can't fix that as far as I know.

However replacing an HDD is not so expensive or difficult.  Short of losing data, installs, etc.  It could have been worse.  Looks as if the laptop in general survived the Gs from the fall.

Before giving up, try removing the CD drive, HDD, and memory and re-seating them.  If this does not do the trick and you have big b@lls you can pop the case apart and look for obvious fail points or partially unplugged cabling.

[Canuck]

Thanks knuck,

I havent worked with laptops much, I did re-seat the ram, and the hard drive. There are a lot of screws on the bottom of the laptop, Im not sure which ones to remove to re-seat the cd drive...

The person hasnt used the laptop for a year, so Im sure there cant be much on the laptop in terms of data.. but I want to ensure it is the hard drive before I go out and get one, that is my main concern.

//Edit: Found the online manual and was able to remove the cd drive

//Edit2: Didnt get the gray screen on startup, booted into Windows! That could have been the issue!

[KnuckleBuckett]

 

 

[jkim]

Yeah, when I think modular bay, I normally think CD drive.  Glad it was fixed.