Help with a dead laptop

Factual Questions
1

We have a very old laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8100, that we use pretty much only for iTunes. Unfortunately it is unable to boot up, because it appears to be unable to communicate with its hard drive. (I’ve checked the computer problem sticky and there’s nothing there on the issue.)

When you turn the computer on, it says:

Needless to say, striking F1 doesn’t help, it just makes another “No bootable devices” line come up. F2 goes into setup, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual there. In Setup, it has the Boot Order with “CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive” then “Diskette Drive” then “Internal HDD” checked, with the other options unchecked.

When it is running, it runs Windows XP. The hard drive, which can be removed if you take out a screw is an IBM Travelstar Model IC25N020ATDA04-0 4200RPM 5V 1.0A DC 20.00GB ATA/IDE. Taking it out and reinserting it doesn’t help the problem.

A few days ago, this popped up, and I turned the computer off and on again, and it booted up. Now, no matter how often I restart, I can’t get it to boot.

I’ve taken out and reinstalled everything removable (floppy drive, CD-ROM, battery), and opened up all of the compartments (CPU, RAM), though I didn’t unplug any of them, and it didn’t help. I can do exploratory surgery if necessary to hunt for loose wires, but I’d prefer to see if there’s something less drastic to do first.

Optimally, I’d like to get it up and running, at least long enough to pull our iTunes music off of it. Alternately, if there were some way to get the data off the hard drive, that would be great.

What do you recommend that I do? Thanks for your help.

2

If you can remove the hard drive, perhaps an external hard drive enclosure?

I use a similar device on my Macs, including old drives from now defunct computers. I don’t see why it should not work on the PC.

(The link is not a recommendation.)

3

I have one of these…it rocks
http://insidecomputer.stores.yahoo.net/usb20235hadr.html

4

Thanks for the help. I’ll go out at lunch and try to find one of those adaptors.

To use them, do I just have to get the hard drive out of the old computer (and remove it from its housing), plug it into the appropriate end of the adaptor, and plug the other end into the USB port? Is there anything else necessary for me to do? It sounds a bit too simple.

5

That’s pretty much it. Just make sure it is compatible with a 2.5" drive, which is what you have on your laptop.

6

Depending on what’s wrong, a live linux CD might be enough to get access to your data.

If the HD is at all accessable, and the CDROM working and bootable, then you should be able to xfer data off to a network share someplace.

7

Hey Billdo. Sorry about your dead laptop. Here at the office, we seem to have a notebook crash every couple months or so. And since we don’t have an IT guy, my business partner and I have had to figure out how to do this on our own.

I’d try the enclosure first. Linux CD second. If you know someone with a similar model laptop, you might also be able to swap the drives and see if it boots.

One thing you should check for when you open up the machine (other than loose wires) is a misplaced sticker. The HP notebook I’m typing this post on blew up on me when I went to visit my Dad in Florida a while back. It’s got two drives, and I found that when I swapped the drives in their bays, the machine would boot. After troubleshooting for a bit, I found that the machine must have gotten hot enough to melt the glue on a sticker that was placed on one of the drives. The sticker slid loose and into one of the HD pins. Either the sticker or the glue was preventing a drive pin from making proper contact. Once I cleaned it up, the machine went back to normal.

So, be on the lookout for anything that might be preventing a solid connection. Good luck!

8

Just a small clarification on using an external USB drive enclosure to rescue the data from the laptop (an excellent idea - I use those enclosures a lot, you can find them on sale all the time for under $20), you’ll have to plug it into another computer. You might be able to get the laptop to boot from an external USB device (if that’s a choice in the BIOS) but your problem could be either something broken on the laptop motherboard so it isn’t seeing the hard drive, or the OS on the drive could be munged up. Both are fixable but could take some time.

The laptop drive runs on 5v so it draws power over the USB cable, no external power supply needed which is a nice thing.

Once you’ve salvaged the data, you can run Checkdisk from your workstation to see if there are any physical problems on the laptop drive. If there aren’t, you can pop it back into the laptop and boot from the XP CD and see about repairing the OS (if that works it would indicate you had some system files go bad).

Have fun!

9

Does the machine sound differently when you power it on now? Hard drives, especially older ones, make enough noise that you can usually tell if the drive has power or not. If it is getting power, does it use the same type of data cable as the CD drive? You could try swapping them temporarily to see if you can boot successfully.

10

How old is it? It may simply be the CMOS battery that’s failed. Also, try powering the machine up with the main battery removed, go into the BIOS, and set the boot order.

11

OK, so I got an enclosure for a 2.5 inch drive, hooked it up and got the little bubbles popping up saying that there were all sorts of things found like an USB to IDE adapter and a disk drive. Unfortunately, no new drive popped up on my drive listing, and I didn’t feel the drive spinning or vibrating.

I had another deadish laptop, and when I pulled the drive from that and hooked it up, the drive whirred and vibrated, and then a disk E: popped up on my Windows Explorer.

So, my guess is that the first disk drive I tried is dead, dead.

Have I missed anything? Is there anything I can do to make it not-quite-dead?

12

Put it in the freezer.

It’s a long shot, but you have nothing to lose.

13

I visited a hard drive recovery specialist when a notebook hard drive of mine mechanically failed. They took the drive apart, mounted the platters on an odd-looking machine and recovered around 75% of the files.

You could do this, but it’s expensive (over $1,000). If it’s mostly a bunch of music files, this probably isn’t cost-effective, but if you have stuff on the drive you can’t live without, send me a PM and I’ll send you the contact info of the guy I used.