I believe the harddrive failed.

Alright guys,
My girlfriends 3 month old m17x-R3's harddrive just failed I believe.
What happen was the computer just crashed while using it, when she went to reboot, it gave her a message that said something along the lines of "Unable to detect boot device, please insert disc" (probably not exact wording)
But anyway, I tried reseating the hard drive, in BIOs under "Advanced" tab, it shows "Not Detected" under Sata hard drive 1 and 2.
So I switched it to the other bay which was empty (only one drive in it) and still the same. The hard drive also makes a beeping sound when its given power.
(Note under "Boot" tab in BIOs, it shows "Hard drive" as an option, but still Not detected in Advanced.

I'm assuming the drive is dead, so I'm wondering options now,
Hows everyones experience with Dell on dead hard drives? Will they want her to send back the whole system, just for them to put a hard drive in, or will the send her the hard drive for self-installation that I could just do?

Also if not, does anyone have a 320 to 500gig 7200rpm hard drive they're willing to sell at a good price?

Not trying to make her go a month without a computer by sending the whole thing to them.

Thanks.

 

should be in home service for the first year.

 

Hmm hadn't thought of that!
I'll give them a call tomorrow.
Now should I tell them I tested it myself, reseating it, swapping to the other bay, checking in bios, etc? Will they try to blame it on user-error or should I just play dumb like I haven't touched it?

 

I would just give them the facts, basically it won't boot and this is what error it gives me. Should be pretty straight forward that it is likely a faulty hard drive and they will send out a tech with a new one.

 

Probably send her a new drive to install everything herself, no need for a tech to do that.

 

yes...and further to that...do NOT let a tech touch her laptop. Semi, take care of everything yourself if you can. Those techs are really rough with the laptops and they go a million miles an hr which can lead to negligence...they get paid by the job, not the hr

 

I think the new Harddrive they send you should have all the software preinstalled on it also.

 

Thanks, saw this right before calling them thankfully LOL.
Tech on the phone tells me to "Insert the windows disc, theres a corrupted file from the sound of it" and even though I explained if there was a corrupted file it would most likely atleast show up as detected in BIOs, yet he still insisted I insert the disc, so I did just to make him happy, and of course it didn't work. So he offered to send a tech to "Make sure it was the hard drive" first, to which I declined and was just like "Dude come on, its obviously the hard drive, its even beeping" So he said he'd send a tech out to replace the hard drive, and since I read your post, I responded "Probably be easier for us both if you just sent me the hard drive to install myself". He finally agreed to it and said it should be here by friday.

Now he didn't ask which Hard drive was in the system, I assume he knows which it is from the service tag though, correct?

 

girlfriend with r3, cool

 

SemiGamer. That is corect he should know from the service tag # But he does not sound like he was all that bright so i hope he gets it right for you.

 

Haha it was the ONLY thing that was able to catch her attention aside from a Mac, been trying to get her to change to PC with me for 2 years, no attempt worked until I showed her the R3 ;D

Yeah I sure hope so, I'm not sure if he wasn't too bright or if he simply thought I was just some average user that didn't know what they were doing.

 

Alright, hard drive came today as promised, got windows installed and boots up just fine. Now the hdd was completely empty of software and drivers, and I remembered that thing about the resource disc ruining the FX lighting on the symtem. So is my only option to install each one by one from dells site? also, AMDs 12.2 drivers say "Do not use with switchable gfx enabled laptops" So which are everyone using for their R3's? (Way too used to my R2 lol).
Thanks guys.

 

That would be best to get the up-dated drivers from dell. as far as your ATI card I have no clue I use Nvidia cards.

 

Thanks.
Service so far has been excellent. Too bad dells driver site is down right now LOL oh well.

Anyone else care to let me know which ATI driver is currently working best for a 6990m R3?

 

SemiGamer:
Dell driver site it back up.

 

Tch it would go back up after I already shut down her computer and got ready for bed LOL
Oh well I'll just do it in the morning, thanks for the heads up though.

As for graphics driver, reading around the forums steered me toward the 12.2 preview driver, seems everyones making out fine with em (Certified not so much).
Still curious why even the previews say not for use with switchable gfx card enabled systems. Hmmm.

 

you should probably install the latest drivers from AMD so 12.2 officials. The reason why some people don't install them or use the 12.2 previews is because they are having driver installation issues with the WHQL version.

Personally, i've never had issues installing any AMD drivers and if i wanted to install the 12.2 WHQL's they will install just like the 11.7, 11.8, 11.9, 11.10, 11.11 etc before it. (I just can't be bothered doing another install lol...so i've stuck with the 12.2 previews)

 

​

Thanks.
Everyones saying the 12.2 officials are worse than the previews, so I installed the previews on it.
Not without a hassle though LOL
Installed once, BSOD during the install, read that you should install again right after it boots, so I did, just to get a message saying the drivers were compatible with any graphics card installed and than closed itself, without rebooting I re-ran the installation and it finally completed / prompt for the reboot.

All is well now, Thanks everyone that helped.

Side note: I hear alot of bad things about Dell, but they handled my little problem pretty easily. I assume it would have been worse if it was a graphics card they had to just send out or something though haha.

 

Dell service is actually quite good. They are reasonable. The other computer companies out there would have required you to send it in

only 1 bsod? not bad lol.