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Thread: Dell Inspirion 537

  1. #1
    Free-DC Semi-retire gopher_yarrowzoo's Avatar
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    Mar 2002
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    Knoxville, TN
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    Dell Inspirion 537

    Ok, a friend wanted me to look at their dell tower, said they'd taken it else where and they wanted $$$ to repair it..

    So I look at it..
    Plug in - PSU LED came on, plug in monitor, disconnected all drives.. boot test.... "No Drives error... press enter" - so it boots..
    I hit the Power button on the front, reconnect the drives.. and then it won't boot.. PSU LED off.
    I recheck everything, unplug and replug everything.. PSU LED comes back on..
    I boot it, I get stuck in the vista "I can't boot not even safe mode" boot loop...
    I boot it into it's diagnostic tools and let it run the full set of tests under "I can't boot to the OS" ... Disk, memory, CPU all pass.
    I go grab a Live CD, boot to it, force mount the drives, as they wouldn't mount right, seems ok at that level I can read the NTFS - I was missing the "ntfs" file from the CD to do the linux chkdsk..
    I think hmm Vista is close enough to 7 I can get it to check it..
    I get my Win 7 install CD - go to recovery console.
    chkdsk /f it and well I get a pile of errors bad security descriptors etc..
    I reboot it to the OS and I actually BOOTS, well I got a black screen with a cursor and not much else but it's a start right..
    I then have to get to work so turn it off to work on it later...
    That was all Friday / Saturday..
    Today I go to boot it and nothing.
    I then disconnect it from Power, wait, reconnect it and the PSU LED goes out..
    I'm thinking "what" so i disconnect JUST the 20+4 main power conn..
    The LED comes back on...
    I hit the power button and well the fans spin for like 1/2 second and stop, the longer i press it the more it repeats it..

    Thinking PSU or the mobo has gone ?
    PSU is a 300w Hipro custom DELL job..

    Thoughts.
    Semi-retired from Free-DC...
    I have some time to help.....
    I need a new laptop,but who needs a laptop when you have a phone...
    Now to remember my old computer specs..


  2. #2
    Free-DC Semi-retire gopher_yarrowzoo's Avatar
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    Mar 2002
    Location
    Knoxville, TN
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    3,985
    Belated reply but never the less here it is, new PSU with a bit more Power to it.... and a reinstall of Win 7 and it works like a charm again...

    Now to just go get me another laptop Hard drive as the last one is saying "Pre Failure" / "Old Age" in SMART when I use "Photo Rec" on the EBCD or it might be a UBCD I'm not sure used a few to test / check it.
    Windows Hangs on Boot - eventually rebooting via a "Hard error" BSOD and then boots me to the recovery console...
    In the recovery console - I can see the HDD no problem - checked it with CHKDSK /F - 1 bad sector!
    It won't repair windows as it's a bad drive...
    I'm hoping I can get an new 2.5" drive and clone over the old one repair and get windows working, I intend to UP the HDD space so I got a Linux Space dual booter
    Semi-retired from Free-DC...
    I have some time to help.....
    I need a new laptop,but who needs a laptop when you have a phone...
    Now to remember my old computer specs..


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