Problem with Inspiron 9300

System Specs:

Inspiron 9300
2.0ghz Pentium M
GeForceGO 6800
1gb RAM
100GB Hard Drive
Windows XP Media Center Edition, SP2

Recently I have noticed that upon hitting a key or moving my mouse to end hibernation mode on my laptop (like after a night's sleep the following morning), the computer would not come back from hibernating, instead the screen would remain black. It would only do this maybe one out of 10 times. I know the system was still on because the power light was on, and the hard drive was showing activity. Flash forward about a week to now. The computer will not boot into windows. It will load all the way until the screen that, if you have multiple accounts on a computer, would be the login screen. On my computer, I was the only user so it would simply say "Microsoft Windows XP" on that lovely blue background, and then progress into windows and the desktop, icons, etc. would load. Now, however, it hangs indefinitely at that screen. The cursor shows up, and Dell Quickset even works! This would lead me to believe that quickset has therefore had a chance to load and run. This, along with the fact that my cursor shows up and is movable, confuses me as to what the problem could be. I have left the computer sitting at this screen thinking that maybe it is just taking an exceptionally long time to load, but after 3 hours it still does not load. I have tried booting in safe mode, in "last known good configuration" mode, pretty much every available "mode" there is to choose from. They all hang at the same spot: on the welcome to xp screen. I've tried removing the RAM and making sure it was plugged in nice and snug, and it is. I've removed the hard drive and made sure it, too, was nice and snug. I can't figure out what's up, and I have no clue what to do from here short of formatting, but I have things I really don't want to lose.

Any suggestions as to what may be wrong? I'm baffled.

 

It isn't going to be a hardware issue. It could just be Windows breaking down. Done a reinstall of it lately?

 

No, the last reinstall I did was this past September.

I take care of my laptop very well, and I have a pretty good sense of what to do to prevent adware/spyware from getting on my computer, so I usually have little to no problems regarding a slow system, or hijacking or anything like that. That's why this is such a surprise to me.

I have alot (read: very lot) of stuff I would like to save, so formatting would be my very last option.

I tried inserting the windows XP installation disk and went to "repair" to initiate a command prompt. From there I logged in as admin and planned to copy everything I wanted to save (I have a pretty good idea of where everything I want to save is, without actually being able to see it). I was surprised to see that the xcopy command was not supported by the command prompt. Also, I cannot seem to located "My Documents" on the C drive. I viewed the root directory of C: (dir c and can't find a directory that resembles My Documents. I tried to copy a known file from my documents on C: to my D: drive, but the path in the command prompt is not the same as the path in Windows for some reason. I may be wrong here, though, but I was trying to copy a file from the path of:

C:\Documents and Settings\Steven\My Documents\filename

But it says that path is incorrect. If I can't get into windows to copy things over to my D: partition, I don't know what else to do.

Will installing over the current installation of Windows preserve all of my files? I have experience with reinstalling, but I've never installed without first formatting.

 

Don't reinstall without backing up files. You WILL lose your stuff. I suggest downloading a LiveCD of Ubuntu linux, booting it, then copying everything over to an external or your D drive if you are going to keep that partition.

EDIT: Here is a good tutorial from Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/software/disk-recovery/geek-to-live--rescue-files-with-a-boot-cd-192982.php

 

I cannot get into Windows to copy files over to my D: partition. I tried to do that with the command prompt by using DOS commands, and it would not work. I could not locate the files I wanted to save, thus copy.

Would it be possible to install XP over the current installation without formatting? That may produce a somewhat dirty C: partition, but if it would allow me to at least get into windows and get to the files I want to save, I could then format the C: partition after saving everthing and do a clean install.

What does the option "Leave the current file system intact (don't format)" on the XP installation screen do? Would that just install XP over the current one, replacing files of sorts?

 

I highly recommend against doing the Leave the current file system intact" and follow the link involving booting a LiveCD of linux. There is always a possibility when installing an OS to overwrite your files.

 

I will try that if I can't find an alternative fix today.

The reason I would prefer another fix right now is because I'm currently in college, and living in the dorms. The internet here is less than ideal for downloading anything larger than 5 or 10 megs. The ISO for the LiveCD is approximately 700megs. That would take well over a day to download at the speeds we get here at UGA.

I'm going to try messing around with copying files in DOS and see if I can't locate the essential files I need (3 essays I'm working on...) and at least copy those. I wouldn't be too depressed over the loss of things such as my favorites, etc, but those essays took FOREVER to write!

Read: Still looking for suggestions if anyone has any!

Thanks mfm for your help so far, I will get that download started tonight and see how much gets done while I sleep...

 

I have the same problem with my 9300 freezing up after what appears to be hibernating, however i have hibernation turned off. I have in the past replaced the dc jack on the mb, to fix another power issue. Now if i move the laptop a certain way the screen goes black but the laptop stays on but it makes a crackling noise. I am an MCSE and I am not sure where the problem lies. I have backed up all inportant files but I do not think its an OS problem. I assume its a short in the board or a short in the power again. I have gone through 3 power packs already and 2 batteries. Any help?

 

It sounds to me like a required start up file is missing or corrupt. I would recommend opening the Recovery Console and running

Code:

chkdsk /r

to have it check all the required Windows files. If it finds any are missing or corrupt it should attempt to fix them.

If you boot from a linux LiveCD you should be able to make a back up of any file on the hard drive that isn't corrupted, even if Windows is not letting you do so (all the required commands are part of the LiveCD, and not from your hard drive, so the status of your hard drive on determines whether or not you can access the files).

If you have any other questions about the system I will be happy to answer them.

Larry
Dell Customer Advocate