BleepingComputer.com: Dell Studio 1537 laptop turning on but...

Hi all, first want to thank for all the hard workers running this forum and for the future help i may receive from any of you and hopefully posting in correct forum-subforum place, move if in wrong place.

I have a Dell Studio 1537 series laptop and when it is turned on it gets past the dell startup logo, then it shows: "SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0: WDC WD3200BEVT-75ZCT2-(S1) WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent. Press F1 to Continue"
After pressing F1 it just shuts down and turns on again, and loops the same manner. Now Im thinking, the hard drive is bricked, say ok no prob. I happen to have a fresh spare. Nothing. Same deal, except it doesnt show the SMART message it just goes into a restart loop always after getting past the dell logo screen. wth?

Pop in various boot cds, go into bios change boot order, nothing. Same thing. Press F12 to go into boot menu at the dell logo startup screen, select CD/DVD device, nothing,zero,nada. Same thing, stuck at restart loop. Say ok, internal CD/DVD gone bad as well, no prob. happen to have a external cd/dvd drive laying around. Test it with my other working laptop, works flawless. Connect it back to the dell, press F12 to go into the boot menu, select usb attached device, nothing, tried every usb port.wth? Ok, now Happen to have a bootable flash drive laying around as well, connect it, tried to boot from it, samething,loops. Running out of ideas/options, last thing tried was remove cmos battery for 20 mins, nothing.


Seems like it Does not want to boot from any device including the hdd, why? =( Is this going farther than the obvious? CMOS? M/B? CPU? sorry for the long post, just wanted to go detail on it of all things tried so far, any ideas VERY WELCOMED! Thank you in advance.

Just an outside chance, but if your CMOS battery is bad the settings in the BIOS will revert to the default settings. Enabling the USB or changing the boot order for the CD/DVD will revert back to the default settings.

dc3, on 09 December 2010 - 12:37 AM, said:

ok thanks for your reply. I replaced the cmos battery with 3 different NEW betteries but still same thing. Does not want to boot to any device. Is there a way to disable SMART in bios? I checked and cant find any option at all in bios to disable it, or is it called something else(PhoenixBios ver A08)? this computer is turning out to be worse than expected...blah

I would suggest flashing the BIOS. You can download the BIOS here.

Follow these instructions:

Click Download.

Click the Save button. The Save As window will appear.

Select Desktop using the drop-down menu to the right of Save in.

Click the Save button.
A progress indicator moves as the download is completed.


NOTE: Shut down all other applications prior to running the BIOS update utility. The update utility reboots your system in order to get the new BIOS loaded.


Double click the Icon on your desktop labeled 1537_A09.EXE.

The Dell Bios Flash window appears.

Click the Continue button.

The message Pressing OK will close all applications, shut down Windows, Flash the BIOS, then reboot. appears.

Click the OK button.

The system will restart and the Bios Flash will be completed.

This post has been edited by dc3: 09 December 2010 - 10:28 PM

dc3, on 09 December 2010 - 10:27 PM, said:

Appreciate the idea but I would kindly and happily would do it if the system would even boot, right now its not booting from anything, including any hdd, so let alone I cant get into windows or any OS for that matter... ='(

is there a way to flash bios some other way? like right at pre POST or right after it? i can make a short video of how its acting and post it if you want me to so you can see what its doing.

if its worth anything, i Forgot to mention that this specific bios(dont know for sure if the option is from dell or phoenixbios) has an option called "Diagnostics" when F12 is pressed which takes you to the boot menu. when selected, it does nothing or loads nothing. it just continues to show the smart message(if the bad hdd is connected) or restarts(with a good hd connected).

Because this problem has repeated with every change that has been made it does look like there is a problem with the BIOS. Unfortunately I haven't had any success finding any information for purchasing a replacement EEPROM (the BIOS chip) for your computer. Replacing the chip may be the only option short of replacing the motherboard.

This computer isn't under warranty by any chance?