Does This Mean HD Crash?

[presmark]

A power outage shut down my Dell Latitude D800, running XP Sp2. When I powered it back up, it won't get past the black Dell initialization screen. The progress bar gets nearly to the end as usual, but stops short at about 95%. Before, it would complete the bar quickly, then show the XP starting screen. Not anymore.

I can hear no HD activity and the HD light doesn't come on. I've rebooted MANY times, and waited hours, but it doesn't change. I can't get into the BIOS or the boot menu either.

Does this mean my hard drive has crashed? Or is there something I can do? I cannot even get to the BIOS to change the boot choice to CD or Floppy. Now I know why it's not a good idea to alway have the HD first in the boot sequence. :-(

Any ideas?

Thanks, Mark

[South59]

Power outages are normally not a good thing,you could be looking at some seroius damage,try looking into an apc power supply to prevent this from happening again,mine has battery backup so if the power goes off,i have up to 25 minutes to shut it down properly,as for yours only a tech could be for certain what damages occured during the outage,Tim(South)

[caperjack]

I agree totally with South59

[DenisOxon]

I don't think so - I suggest motherboard or memory has gone.

Before going to shop, try removing memory and rebooting. If motherboard is working then you will likely get a constant beeping and pc won't boot because it has no memory. IF no beeping then chances are motherboard has a problem.

You could also try removing all cards and rebooting to see if one has gone wrong and is stopping boot process.

Good luck

Denis

[dos_centavos]

A power outage shut down my Dell Latitude D800, running XP Sp2. When I powered it back up, it won't get past the black Dell initialization screen. The progress bar gets nearly to the end as usual, but stops short at about 95%. Before, it would complete the bar quickly, then show the XP starting screen. Not anymore.

I can hear no HD activity and the HD light doesn't come on. I've rebooted MANY times, and waited hours, but it doesn't change. I can't get into the BIOS or the boot menu either.

Does this mean my hard drive has crashed? Or is there something I can do? I cannot even get to the BIOS to change the boot choice to CD or Floppy. Now I know why it's not a good idea to alway have the HD first in the boot sequence. :-(

Any ideas?

Thanks, Mark

I would have to agree with DenisOxon - If the HD or Mother Board were indeed fried you would never have gotten to the windows start up screen. So indeed something is being read from the BIOS and the HD. Of course this doesn't mean that some part of the Mother Board hasn't taken a serious hit. Memory is a good place to start. I don't believe the EIDE interface took a hit because from your description it is still operational. Have you tried F8 when you boot to attempt to get into safe mode? One other question - are you using a docking station? If so have you removed it from the docking station and tried to boot?

[DimaYasny]

knowing Dell, the white bar is the hardware detection process progress bar. forst thing to try - dosconnect everything externally connected, like usb devices, pull out the PCMCIA cards and the CDROM... everything you can.

if that doesn't help - there is a diagnostic built into dell computers, F10 or F11 on post, you should see that in the top right corner. try to run that