Service Tag Location on Hard Drive?

Hi. My m11x won't boot. It dead starts; all the lights are there, but no bios or anything. I've been through all the troubleshooting steps with no luck.

It's still under warranty but Dell won't give me the time of day without the service tag, which I lost.

I do know that the service tag info is stored on the hard drive somewhere. I have the hard drive out and connected to a SATA/usb interface (on a mac, I have no PCs to boot the hard drive with), so I have access to the files, but I don't know where the information I need is.

In windows, I'd right click on the drive, and go to properties and a big window, where I believe the service tag is listed, would appear. Does anyone know how I could access that information/where it is on the hard drive?

Thanks in advance!

 

Try to connect a vga lcd to it and enter bios. The service tag is there.
Or it should be written on a sticker under the laptop, or on the laptop box.

 

yup, it should be on the base of the m11x.

 

I'm sorry I was a little frustrated when I wrote my post;

I lost the sticker that has the service tag on it. It's an m11x R1, I don't know if they've changed it, but my service tag came on a sticker, and the sticker fell off some time ago.

I have tried to boot up with a vga display plugged in with no luck either. I cannot get to the bios. The computer starts up and just idles with the lights on and no reaction from the screen at all.

Thank you both for your suggestions.

 

You can try this...not sure if it will work though, place the m11x in another laptop and boot off of it. Then look at system properties and check if your Service Tag shows up.

 

Try check your email or Dell account for your M11x order information/invoice and specifications.

It might be there, or at least that's the place I could find it for my order back in 2006. (assuming Alienware orders go through Dell)

 

I bought the computer at a Best Buy retail store, which has no records of service tags (or so said the customer service reps).



I appreciate all the suggestions, but I have tried and thought of these and many alternatives, none of these options are available to me. I've done my research and the only thing left to try is retrieving it from the hard drive.

 

You cannot retrieve it from the harddrive, hence the multitude of advices received so far that none fit your ideas.
Find a PC and boot off the hdd and check system properties.

 

I was fortunately able to find my sticker, but had I been unable, this problem would remain unresolved. That is no fault of any of the helpful people who replied to my thread (again, thanks to those people!), but a flaw in Dell's system - though I may have misplaced an important sticker, it should be in a much more reasonable place for something so important(like engraved into the laptop body).

To all those who came upon this thread hoping to find a solution, I'm afraid it's a tough road. I got them to at least offer me an email address to send my proof of purchase and phone number, but that was only after threatening to raise hell about it online.

The system seems to be iron clad; They will not help you without a service tag. It's still bull, the fact that I found my sticker doesn't excuse that. If someone does come across this, and hasn't found a solution, feel free to PM me and I'll do what I can to raise some hell because it's not acceptable to base the entire customer service system on a sticker.

 

Now take off your back cover and using a marker to write your service tag on the back side of the cover.