Dell 8600 - hard drive or larger issue?

[Eric H.]

Hi folks,

THe other day I went to boot up my 8600 laptop and immediately noticed it was too quiet - no fans started spinning, and no noise from the hard drive. Now, if I recall, normally a fan will kick on and then turn off after a few seconds, and you can hear the hard drive going.

So the laptop started to boot. I got the normal screens - press f2 to enter seyp, etc. When it reached the point where Windows would start to initiate, I recieved a message saying there's a hard drive error (I will post the exact error when I get off work tonight). This laptop is two years old. I don't know if I should replace the hard drive and I'll be good to go, or if there is a larger issue I should worry about.

Also, I went into setup, and there is no hard drive detected. Normally I would contact Dell, but if I can be assured it's just the hard drive I would rather just buy a new one instead of spending my time with support.

thanks
Eric

[glc]

It's most likely a failed hard drive - but you should run Dell diagnostics to make sure you don't have other issues.