(intro for those not familiar with dell partition schemes)
Dell laptops ship with a small (37Mb) first partition, which is not bootable by default, and contains (seemingly DOS-based) diagnostic utilities. Normally you don't see this partition. As shipped, Windows is on the second partition and is bootable.
If your Dell laptop has a problem, the Dell support folks will tell you to hold down the function Fn key while pressing the power button. This produces a message 'diagnostic boot selected', it does its power on self test and boot sequence, then runs the diagnostics. You get a text screen and it automatically runs a series of tests (screen, memory, cpu, and so on) giving either 'Pass' or an error code. The Dell techs want to know the error codes. After the initial set of tests, there is a message 'press any key to boot utility partition' and, apparently, this takes you to a menu with further, in depth diagnostic options.
(my situation)
I dual boot Windows XP SP2, which shipped with the machine, and KUbuntu (Feisty Fawn beta). I repartitioned the disk in partition magic to substantially shrink the NTFS Windows partition and add an extended partition which has the folowing partitions in it:
- my data, NTFS (dislike having this on C: - in windows this is drive D)
- linux root partition
- linux swap partition
I left the Dell Utility partition alone.
Linux sees the linux root partition as /dev/sda4 and mounts / there. It sees the swap as /dev/sda6 and mounts /swap there. I also have it mount the others - /dev/sda2 is mounted as /winxp, /dev/sda5 is mounted as /data and I even mounted /dev/sda1 as /dellutility.
From Linux I can see all these partitions. The Dell utility partition is there, its FAT32 and it has a bunch of executable (.exe) files there.
(my problem)
I recently had a small hardware issue. Nothing major, my left fan stopped working. But I contacted Dell and they asked me to do a diagnostic boot, report any errors, then go to the main diagnostic menu and run one other test from that.
Diagnostic boot worked fine, it ran some tests which all passed, then it said press any key to go to the diagnostic menu. Unfortunately, pressing any key took me to the grub menu with choices for linux, linux diagnostic mode, memtest (there three are all from kubuntu) and windows xp.
Grub is installed in the MBR.
(my actual question)
Have I lost the ability to run the extended diagnostic tests? Or are they there, but I need to add someting to the grub menu to tell it to make /dev/sda1 bootable and to boot it?
Attempts to RTFG revealed some similar questions but no actual answers
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=140903
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266094
http://pervasivecomputing.net/ubuntu...inspiron_e1505
the last of those explains how to use windows boot menu rather than grub, which I haven't done. i also see people putting grub on a different partition - I used the regular install CD so it went in the MBR.
Has anyone succeeded in getting to the dell extended diagnostic tests and if so, please point me to instructions or hints?
Dell laptops ship with a small (37Mb) first partition, which is not bootable by default, and contains (seemingly DOS-based) diagnostic utilities. Normally you don't see this partition. As shipped, Windows is on the second partition and is bootable.
If your Dell laptop has a problem, the Dell support folks will tell you to hold down the function Fn key while pressing the power button. This produces a message 'diagnostic boot selected', it does its power on self test and boot sequence, then runs the diagnostics. You get a text screen and it automatically runs a series of tests (screen, memory, cpu, and so on) giving either 'Pass' or an error code. The Dell techs want to know the error codes. After the initial set of tests, there is a message 'press any key to boot utility partition' and, apparently, this takes you to a menu with further, in depth diagnostic options.
(my situation)
I dual boot Windows XP SP2, which shipped with the machine, and KUbuntu (Feisty Fawn beta). I repartitioned the disk in partition magic to substantially shrink the NTFS Windows partition and add an extended partition which has the folowing partitions in it:
- my data, NTFS (dislike having this on C: - in windows this is drive D)
- linux root partition
- linux swap partition
I left the Dell Utility partition alone.
Linux sees the linux root partition as /dev/sda4 and mounts / there. It sees the swap as /dev/sda6 and mounts /swap there. I also have it mount the others - /dev/sda2 is mounted as /winxp, /dev/sda5 is mounted as /data and I even mounted /dev/sda1 as /dellutility.
From Linux I can see all these partitions. The Dell utility partition is there, its FAT32 and it has a bunch of executable (.exe) files there.
(my problem)
I recently had a small hardware issue. Nothing major, my left fan stopped working. But I contacted Dell and they asked me to do a diagnostic boot, report any errors, then go to the main diagnostic menu and run one other test from that.
Diagnostic boot worked fine, it ran some tests which all passed, then it said press any key to go to the diagnostic menu. Unfortunately, pressing any key took me to the grub menu with choices for linux, linux diagnostic mode, memtest (there three are all from kubuntu) and windows xp.
Grub is installed in the MBR.
(my actual question)
Have I lost the ability to run the extended diagnostic tests? Or are they there, but I need to add someting to the grub menu to tell it to make /dev/sda1 bootable and to boot it?
Attempts to RTFG revealed some similar questions but no actual answers
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=140903
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266094
http://pervasivecomputing.net/ubuntu...inspiron_e1505
the last of those explains how to use windows boot menu rather than grub, which I haven't done. i also see people putting grub on a different partition - I used the regular install CD so it went in the MBR.
Has anyone succeeded in getting to the dell extended diagnostic tests and if so, please point me to instructions or hints?
