DST short test failed...computer wont boot

[nizzy1115]

My 6 month old laptop has needed 4 reformats so far because of disk problems and now it wont boot past the windows loading screen. i played around and i found a diganositc test that could be run through the bios and it passed everything up till one called DST short test and it failed. Thats the hard drive one saying if its ok or not right? If so should i to another format reinstall or should i demand that i payed a lot of money for my x300 and demand a new hard drive so i dont have these problems anymore? Anybody with input would be apreciated greatly! Thanks in advance!

[nizzy1115]

My 6 month old laptop has needed 4 reformats so far because of disk problems and now it wont boot past the windows loading screen. i played around and i found a diganositc test that could be run through the bios and it passed everything up till one called DST short test and it failed. Thats the hard drive one saying if its ok or not right? If so should i to another format reinstall or should i demand that i payed a lot of money for my x300 and demand a new hard drive so i dont have these problems anymore? Anybody with input would be apreciated greatly! Thanks in advance!

im answering my own question. The test does check for a bad hard drive and mine was but it was fixable by doing a winxp cd boot and running a chkdsk which found my problems and fixed them letting me boot again. And dell offered to replace the hard drive anyways no charge if i liked! kudos dell!

[missingdata]

Hi, I have the same problem, can you teach me how to fix it?

[nizzy1115]

Gosh that was so long ago its hard to remember exactly what i did...i think i stuck my win xp disk in the drive and booted to it and at the command prompt typed chkdsk and then pressed enter to run the chkdsk program (stands for check disk). Should find and fix any problems it comes along to find...Hope this helps!

[Cerebral Assasi]

Gosh that was so long ago its hard to remember exactly what i did...i think i stuck my win xp disk in the drive and booted to it and at the command prompt typed chkdsk and then pressed enter to run the chkdsk program (stands for check disk). Should find and fix any problems it comes along to find...Hope this helps!

Boot to CD (settings to be changed in DOS to boot from CD) (sometiems AMI BIOS has the option to hit F8 and itll ask u where u want to boot from.)

run win xp boot cd and access recovery console... run chkdsk... hit y when it asks u to... another way of doing this is right click on ur hard drive and choose properties.. tools... disk check... choose both the options asking for complete scan etc.. itll then say that scan will be done when windows is restarted.. say ok.. restart...

[s8383783]

Gosh that was so long ago its hard to remember exactly what i did...i think i stuck my win xp disk in the drive and booted to it and at the command prompt typed chkdsk and then pressed enter to run the chkdsk program (stands for check disk). Should find and fix any problems it comes along to find...Hope this helps!

I dont think I have a win xp disk is there anything else I can do?:confused:

Have mercy please i'm only 12 x_X

[nicz888]

Boot to CD (settings to be changed in DOS to boot from CD) (sometiems AMI BIOS has the option to hit F8 and itll ask u where u want to boot from.)

run win xp boot cd and access recovery console... run chkdsk... hit y when it asks u to... another way of doing this is right click on ur hard drive and choose properties.. tools... disk check... choose both the options asking for complete scan etc.. itll then say that scan will be done when windows is restarted.. say ok.. restart...

my dell laptop just got this error message tonight, i run the diagnosis test and an error message pointed to the Harddrive, it said DST short test something like that.
i am running window vista ultima, so how i perform the chkdsk, since window wouldn't boot.

[On_a_Quest]

my dell laptop just got this error message tonight, i run the diagnosis test and an error message pointed to the Harddrive, it said DST short test something like that. i am running window vista ultima, so how i perform the chkdsk, since window wouldn't boot.

I'm not sure but I would expect your PC or Vista came with a Vista CD. I did this on XP but would think it Vista is the same. At power on I hit F12 (may be different on your PC - computer tells you at boot up) to enter the Boot Screen. I inserted my XP CD and selected the 'boot from CD' option. The PC then started, gave me a 'Press any key to boot from CD' command. When I hit a key (I had about 5 seconds to hit a key) the PC began to boot up using the CD. Eventually (took a few minutes) I was presented with an option to hit 'R' to enter a recovery/repair mode. This initiated a command console screen and after I selected '1' for my location of the Windows Operating System I was trying to fix a prompt was given. I have also read that it may require you to enter your password. Nonetheless, I then recall typing in caps, "CHKDSK /R" (You can type 'HELP CHKDSK' to see all the options). After about an hour my disk was apparently fixed and Windows now boots up as it used to.

[dise652]

how it can do the same with vista? is it

[Mitchman203]

hi
i was trying to delete everything on my hard drive and re install windows XP. i did this because of my computer was slow. i had done this once or twice before. i was half way through installing windows XP when a blue screen came up and yelled at me and said has to reboot... something bios setup. i rebooted and it came up as no hard drive found :( . i ran windows xp again and it i tried to finish the set up but it says windows cannot find a hard disk found press f3 to reboot. i did the diagnostic test next and DST short test failed. i ran the diagnostic tests from the dell cd and all the test came out correct. i have a dell insperion 2200. if anyone could help
Thanks Alot

[DimaYasny]

if a proper DST fails, you need to replace the HDD. it means it hasn't passed it's own internal diags

[Mitchman203]

So your saying i need a new hard drive pretty much

[DimaYasny]

yup

[Mitchman203]

can i use a external hard drive through USB?

[DimaYasny]

if your system supports booting from it
but USB is much slower than ATA or SCSI, so the performance hit will be huge

[Mitchman203]

do you know step by step instructions for that i get in windows installer to where i need to pick the hard drive i find the external but then it says i cant access it :'(

[DimaYasny]

google it man.

[Mitchman203]

hey i need one more thing i need to do cab sdk on a few files to setup some stuff i go into the command and its says to type "cabarc x
USBSTORE.IN_" i get your computer does not reconize carbac and ive tried alot thats what i get all the time
thanks

[mohan007]

First i want to know whether you used the XP CD with Service Pack2 of with ordinary XP CD.

[compute_girl]

Many computers come with pre-loaded software. I don't have the Windows XP disk needed in order to fix this problem. Any suggestions for those without the OS disks? How to resolve the DST short test failure now?