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newby needs help booting a Latitude D420

post #1 of 13
6/28/10 at 12:50pm
Thread Starter 
Hi all, i have a Latitude D420, 60 gig hdd, intel dual core, 1 gig ram, which wont boot up. This unit was purchased from an auction of surplus business machines but looks like it was never used, still got the plastic covers on etc. This unit has no optical drive so i have tried booting it from a flash drive with xp pro on it, all is fine in the process ie loading drivers to ram drive, starting to load windows,...... then this on a blue screen,

"STOPxoooooo7e(oxcoooooo5,oxf7a5f208,oxf7a5efo8) pci.sys - address f7613obf base at f760cooo, datestamp 367d855c"

I ran the dell diagnostics which are pre loaded and this did a dst short test on the HDD, it passed. Then ran full tests and got this (all tests passed fine BTW)

"pre boot system assessment no diagnostic utility partition identified"

UHH ! it just used the diagnostic utility to give this error message

Just 1 more thing when i use fdisk and look at partition information i see 100% for c drive usage, but i know the disk is almost empty as i had been able to format it with fdisk.

Q. Do these dell machines have to have something done before first boot ?

Cheers
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post #2 of 13
6/28/10 at 1:55pm
Moving this to DELL Section for more input.

cheers ...
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post #3 of 13
6/28/10 at 7:55pm
Well there are a few things to try here, from the error message you may have a hardware issue.

But you can boot into the system BIOS menu right now right ? It just the computert crashes when trying to load the OS ?

Can you swap the memory - even better if you can borrow some new memory from another unit since you only have 1 GB, try to get 3-4 GB if you get this thing working.
If you have 2 sticks try one then the other.

Remove you wireless, and or LAN cards if installed. try bootiing.

last - were you just booting off the USB stick when the error happened or where you trying to load the OS onto the hard Drive ?
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post #4 of 13
6/29/10 at 1:37pm
Thread Starter 
First, sorry ghn i didn't see dell specific. Second thanks dave-p for taking time to reply. Yes i can enter bios and make changes and yes it goes to blue screen at "installing windows". I dont have access to any memory just now and also i found out that i only have .5 gig not 1 as stated took the lan and wan cards out tried to boot, got same. I used flashboot to make the 4 gig zip bootable, with an iso of xp pro, and was in the process of installing win xp from it when error came. I get same error when trying win 98 se, but if i use win 98 floppy and boot with cd rom support it wont treat zip as cd so install fails. I am just going to format the hdd again as some files from both aborted installation s have been left on, the win 98 logo flashes up for half a second and some other files appear to be left, so after i have formated i will try again without the lan and wan, if this is no good i will try and borrow some memory. Will get back

Cheers
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post #5 of 13
6/29/10 at 2:05pm
No problem at all. Hope you will sort out the issue soon. Dave is on the way (flying) home so it will take him sometimes to get back to you.

Enjoy NBF

cheers ...
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post #6 of 13
6/29/10 at 3:34pm
Download and try a linux setup such as Ubuntu... If that fails using a live CD, then you have an issue with the motherboard... From past experience, I have seen that stop error with:
1) bad windows disc
2) RAM fault
3) Hard drive failing
4)Motherboard fault...

Obviously I have only seen it with windows, and using Ubuntu from a pendrive, I can usually get to the bottom of it..

Just an idea...
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post #7 of 13
6/29/10 at 5:26pm
Also I am not sure 512 Mb of memory is enough to install a OS on the D420 at the very least it is a bare minimum.

I would definitley try to get some more memory in there and try re-installing the OS
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post #8 of 13
6/30/10 at 6:48pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for ubuntu MrT it went on the stick fine and booted from it but when i try to install on the HDD it stops at 62 %.with (Error 5) input output error So it looks like the HDD could be bad , but why would both the dell diagnostics and now ubuntu's own disk diagnostic say this disk is good, it is a brand new disk BTW, never had an o/s on it as far as i know. So now i have ubuntu running from the stick but that means i have a 3.7 gig hdd(see zip) computer, with a crippled 60 gig hdd along for a free ride. Or is there a genius out there who has the knowledge. Or am i putting it on ebay as faulty or even as parts seems to be worth £150 ??

PS thanks for the suggestion dave-p but i only want to get it working with windows for the masses so i can sell it for top dollar, hard times yeh, no cash for more parts and i dont know anyone with a compatible lappy

Cheers for your time
Tim
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post #9 of 13
6/30/10 at 6:58pm
Thread Starter 
The HDD is a ATA Toshiba MK6008gah, Firmware version BUO11A.
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post #10 of 13
8/1/10 at 7:29am
From experience, 30Gb and 60Gb drives seem prone to failure... see if you can get a 40Gb or 80Gb replacement, new - should be relatively cheap... Again from past experience, a lot of old small capacity drives generally fail, either at power up or formatting....
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post #11 of 13
8/5/10 at 4:37pm
Thread Starter 
Hi, thanks for that MrT, sorry for no comms but been absent with a nasty virus, quite well now.



Just before i went awol i got a zif to usb connector which let me connect this bugger drive to my pc, great i thought now i can assess and nuke it, not that simple. I connect the drive and get 3 then 2 usb beeps, cant see the drive in win explorer but i can see it in device manager, also can be seen when i click on "safely remove hardware". So it is visible to win xp but not so as i can use it. Also MrT i can here it spinning up, would that not indicate that it is not failing or is that wishful thinking.

In device manager (disc drives properties) it shows two icons, first is 54 gig and second is 2.3 gig, is this 2.3 gig the dell partition which is preventing me from accessing it ?
I was gonna give up but things like this teach you so much if you get to the other end, so i'm persevering untill it drives me mad.

Many thanks
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post #12 of 13
8/7/10 at 4:57am
Sounded like the drive is really going and gone .

cheers ...
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post #13 of 13
1/18/11 at 7:16pm
This looks exactly like a bad hard drive with sectors corrupted.
Buy a 100GB hard drive. Everything below 100GB is about the same cost these days.
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