Dell laptop not booting past Dell splash screen hearing Audible beep from beneath keyboard

[senorcrunch]

More info to come when I am off work, would appreciate any insight to this topic in the mean time

 

[digitaldoc]

Sounds like your hard drive is no good. Try to get it out, and connect it to another computer to see if it is working or not.

 

[senorcrunch]

Thats what I had been thinking, however I don't have a different laptop to try the current hard drive in. Would I be able to hook it into my PC via SATA? Or does it have to be a different laptop. I leave work in 30 minutes and will pull it out and give more details if needed.

 

[digitaldoc]

Laptop hard drive will work via SATA in a desktop.

 

[senorcrunch]

Great I will give it a try when I get home, Now should I disconnect the current hard drive in my PC when I do this so it does not try to boot from there or just go into the boot menu before it tries to boot up and select the laptop hard drive? Should I be worried about any cross-corruption if I have my PC hard drive hooked up while the laptop one is too?

 

[digitaldoc]

Leave the current drive in your desktop, it is your boot drive.

The laptop drive becomes a secondary drive. Would not worry about cross corruption.

 

[senorcrunch]

Great I will try that when I get home and keep you posted.

 

[senorcrunch]

OK digitaldoc, I have taken your advice and hooked my laptop HD into my desktop via SATA, loaded up onto my main drive. I did hear that audible beep I heard when trying to boot the laptop up so I believe we have isolated it to a HD issue. Is there any way to tell if this HD is completely busted from here?

 

[digitaldoc]

If you cannot access the drive while connected to the desktop, than the drive is dead. See if it is under warranty, and if not toss it and start again.