harddisk problem ?

[VJ]

Hello,

I friend called me about a problem he has with his Dell Dimension. The XP just freezes upon boot (initially, only some programs caused a reboot, now it just freezes at boot). So I adviced him to boot from his XP-cd.

When attempting to go in the recovery console, at a certain point you have to choose which Windows version to log on to. This causes the system to hang...
When trying to reinstall the system, it scans for an existing Windows-version, and the system hangs again...

I'll go over there on Saturday. My thoughts are either a seriously corrupt filesystem (zerofilling the drive and reinstalling might do the trick ?) or a defective harddrive (allthough SMART doesn't report anything)...
Any other thoughts on what is going wrong ? (and suggestions for software tools that might help me work it out ?)

Thanks !


Jörg

[ayoub_ibrahim]

if you're willing to get your hands dirty, suggest you take out everything except the videocard,cpu,ram & hdd then see what happens at bootup.

[Dogbert]

How's the dust situation @ your friend's ?
Here we've got quite a lot of it so when shit happens (and it does once in a long while) we just disconnect and reconnect all cables and clean around the case.
Sometimes cleaning the RAM connections helps a lot. Best way to do it is to use a soft eraser.

Like ayoub_ibrahim said, when putting everything back, boot with minimum hardware only and then slowly add the other components to the system.

Good luck !

[VJ]

I don't think there is much dust where the computer is used. It also is about 6 months old, so it seems a bit soon to suffer dustissues. But of course, it can be that that is the case...

Thanks for the suggestions!
(other ideas are still welcome !)


Jörg

[VJ]

How does opening a Dell computer impact the warranty ?


Jörg

[Dogbert]

If it's in warranty why do you waste your time on it ???
Let Dell's technicians break their heads over it.

[VJ]

Well, I just figured a clean-up of the hdd and a re-install would do the trick (but you guys started about the dust-issue ).


Jörg

[Fat Tone]

All the Dell cases I've ever worked with (various Optiplex machines) have a couple of buttons that you press in on the sides, and the case just swings off. That's hardly an attempt at keeping people out! As long as there isn't a sticker joining the cover to the case, and you can reset the intrusion flag (if it has one) then I see no reason not to have a look.

Cheers

T.