Hey Guys,
I recently bought a Vostro 1520 in the US(Dell.com) for my Dad. After it was delivered I just tested it once to make sure everything was working. Now I am having problems getting it to boot.
Sometimes it will go past the Vista splash screen and get stuck at the "Welcome" screen. Sometimes it wont even get to the splash screen i.e. it takes a long time saying " booting from NTLDR etc etc" and then just displays a blank screen.
When I got the laptop initially I took an image of the entire HDD and stored it on my external drive. I wiped out the entire HDD and put Windows 7 Professional on it since I had an extra legal copy. Could this be the issue? The strange thing is that every time i wipe out the HDD and do a clean install it seems to work properly for say ~3-4 boots. If i shutdown the laptop and try it after 2-3 hrs it gives me the same problems again.
I am thinking its the HDD, but want to be sure before I go out and buy a new one. The HDD is a Seagate 7200.4 320GB Drive. Since it's SATA, should I try putting it in my Desktop and checking it's health ? What tool(s) should I be using.
Also, Can something else be wrong here ?
Please let me know,
Thanks
I recently bought a Vostro 1520 in the US(Dell.com) for my Dad. After it was delivered I just tested it once to make sure everything was working. Now I am having problems getting it to boot.
Sometimes it will go past the Vista splash screen and get stuck at the "Welcome" screen. Sometimes it wont even get to the splash screen i.e. it takes a long time saying " booting from NTLDR etc etc" and then just displays a blank screen.
When I got the laptop initially I took an image of the entire HDD and stored it on my external drive. I wiped out the entire HDD and put Windows 7 Professional on it since I had an extra legal copy. Could this be the issue? The strange thing is that every time i wipe out the HDD and do a clean install it seems to work properly for say ~3-4 boots. If i shutdown the laptop and try it after 2-3 hrs it gives me the same problems again.
I am thinking its the HDD, but want to be sure before I go out and buy a new one. The HDD is a Seagate 7200.4 320GB Drive. Since it's SATA, should I try putting it in my Desktop and checking it's health ? What tool(s) should I be using.
Also, Can something else be wrong here ?
Please let me know,
Thanks
