Operating systems not found (help)

#1 A Stinky Bumb

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Posted 14 August 2009 - 09:41 AM

alright i have a dell laptop running windows vista home basic and when i start it up it shows me a menu that states that my battery will not be able to charge... options are F2 to setup menu any key to continue and another button to enter boot menu. i just continue because the power cord is getting power and is connected to the back and it doesnt show any form of the battery wearing out. then it sends me to a menu that states the operating system cannot be found. there are the same options and i hit to continue then it just goes to an all black screen... it wont respond and do anything after that so i just shut it down. the compute has a lot of stuf on it and is has been running slow lately... what are my options here?!

did it crash?
did my hd die?
do i need to reinstall vista? (i no longer have the install disk)

i need help as soon as i can get it!

#2 ThunderZ

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Posted 14 August 2009 - 10:09 AM

No other symptoms or problems prior to this happening?

It was working fine the last time you shut it off?

What model Dell lap top?

Was Vista installed when it was purchased?

A suggestion. Remove the battery. Some have a self-tester built in. It will have several (four ?) green LEDs with the amount of power it is holding. Below this is a small symbol you can push. This should cause on of the LEDs to light up.

You can also try starting the lap top with the battery removed. Do not think this will make a difference but it will not hurt anything that I know of.

#3 groovicus

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Posted 14 August 2009 - 10:38 AM

Sounds like a hard drive crash.

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#4 A Stinky Bumb

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Posted 16 August 2009 - 07:06 PM

no prior symptoms... it was just running slow it didnt have a ton of space left on the HD

it is a dell inspiron 1501 (made 04 i think)
vista home basic came installed when bought

a screen had come up before saying that the battery wasnt gonna charge but i ignored it because it was charging and i could use it off the charger
however the operating system problem screen had never came up before...

if it is a hard drive crash is there any way i could tear the HD out and hook it up to a sata cable or something and pul the info off or is it completely gone forever?

#5 ThunderZ

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Posted 16 August 2009 - 08:49 PM

A Stinky Bumb, on Aug 16 2009, 08:06 PM, said:

if it is a hard drive crash is there any way i could tear the HD out and hook it up to a sata cable or something and pul the info off or is it completely gone forever?

Hard drives can suffer from two kinds of failures. The surface of the disk can become damaged. In this instance recovery of the data, at least some of it is possible by the method you mentioned.

If it is a hardware, as in head crash or failure of the disks to spin up then all bets are off. There are companies that charge BIG $$$$ to recover data in cases like that.

#6 garmanma

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Posted 17 August 2009 - 09:03 AM

Quote

(i no longer have the install disk)

Free of charge the last time I used it
https://support.dell.com/support/topics/glo...n/backupcd_form

Mark

why won't my laptop work?

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