we are trying the frozen HD overnight...we tried it for a few hours today, but same results.
How could it pull up the windows is loading files and the microsoft corporation screen if the HD was bad? Is that possible?
A tech could explain it much better, but the HD is tested by writing to it and when that isn;t what’s read back-or parity bits don’t add up- then the program shuts down.
Your HD works some- like the ‘utility partition’ with these tests on it.
According to the test something is wrong though.
First off, I’d put the whole laptop in the freezer.
If you don’t have a baggie that big, go to an air-conditioned room and put it in a plastic grocery bag,push out all the air, and tape it shut airtight.
The problem could be with the controller on the motherboard and the extra heat-sinking may help.
Also you’ll be starting up more quickly.
Also holding the laptop upside down or sideways may help.
Obviously this is just ‘why not try this it may work’ stuff.
If you just need to ger some info off the computer real quick then before you give up do take your laptop to a mom amd pop computer repair shop and beg for mercy. You never know- there are still very generous people in this world.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?&docid=DSN_155502&isLegacy=true
Are you able to ‘Exit to MS-DOS’ ? CHKDSK may be able to help you but it’s very chancy.
Yes. HDs generally do not "fail" all at once. Performance starts to degrade and intermittent errors pop. Sometimes the drive can recover, sometimes it can't. The data you want may be accessible but the operating system to run the machine cannot be properly loaded.