Long version:
Not sure if these things are related since my knowledge of computers is limited.. but my Dell Inspiron 6400 has been acting up lately. Last year or so it has occasionally been unable to read the wireless network card. Sometimes doesn't read the cd/dvd drive. While annoying neither of those issues is really a big deal.
However, for the last few months it has been very slow about everything from FFXI to excel to running firefox.
And last week, I tried to run symantec antivirus and the program would not open at all. No error message just wouldn't boot up. Well this morning I checked my laptop to see that it said in the bottom right corner that it could not update symantec virus definitions. I thought this was odd so attempted to open firefox to look for help troubleshooting. Firefox hadn't loaded 30 seconds later so I left for a minute to get some water. Came back to find my computer with the power light on but displaying a black screen. I restarted it only to have it tell me that system32 was corrupted. Restarted a few more times but it would just redisplay the same message and then go to a black screen. Tried to repair XP with the installation CD and was told it was too damaged. Tried to reinstall XP and it repeatedly stopped at 39% (for 60 min, 45 min, and 30 min before I gave up). Tried a "quick" reinstall, upon Heie's suggestion. This successfully reinstalled windows XP but it was very buggy. Couldn't run anything at all essentially. ... As a computer N00b it only just then occured to me to run a diagnostic. My laptop failed the DST short test for hard drive. Gave me error 2000-0148 and also said IDE error and said SE no addition sense information. So does this mean conclusively that my hard drive is dead? What options might I have to fix this?
----------------------------------------
Short version:
Ran diagnostic on my laptop and got a hard drive error: 2000-0148. What options might I have to fix this?
-----------------------------------------------
I anticipate that this may take a while to fix as my funds are very limited atm, so I will likely be missing for a while.
:arg:
Not sure if these things are related since my knowledge of computers is limited.. but my Dell Inspiron 6400 has been acting up lately. Last year or so it has occasionally been unable to read the wireless network card. Sometimes doesn't read the cd/dvd drive. While annoying neither of those issues is really a big deal.
However, for the last few months it has been very slow about everything from FFXI to excel to running firefox.
And last week, I tried to run symantec antivirus and the program would not open at all. No error message just wouldn't boot up. Well this morning I checked my laptop to see that it said in the bottom right corner that it could not update symantec virus definitions. I thought this was odd so attempted to open firefox to look for help troubleshooting. Firefox hadn't loaded 30 seconds later so I left for a minute to get some water. Came back to find my computer with the power light on but displaying a black screen. I restarted it only to have it tell me that system32 was corrupted. Restarted a few more times but it would just redisplay the same message and then go to a black screen. Tried to repair XP with the installation CD and was told it was too damaged. Tried to reinstall XP and it repeatedly stopped at 39% (for 60 min, 45 min, and 30 min before I gave up). Tried a "quick" reinstall, upon Heie's suggestion. This successfully reinstalled windows XP but it was very buggy. Couldn't run anything at all essentially. ... As a computer N00b it only just then occured to me to run a diagnostic. My laptop failed the DST short test for hard drive. Gave me error 2000-0148 and also said IDE error and said SE no addition sense information. So does this mean conclusively that my hard drive is dead? What options might I have to fix this?
----------------------------------------
Short version:
Ran diagnostic on my laptop and got a hard drive error: 2000-0148. What options might I have to fix this?
-----------------------------------------------
I anticipate that this may take a while to fix as my funds are very limited atm, so I will likely be missing for a while.
