Dell Studio mini panic

[cheeseyfatmonkey]

A few minutes ago while my wife was using the laptop my Dell started to beep (the beep seemed to coming from inside the laptop) and click and then froze up. My wife had been using the laptop propped on a pillow which I think has blocked the air vent at the back.

Currently it will not boot up and there is a clicking noise from inside the case. Is my laptop dead or should I wait and see if it just needs to cool down?

I'm in trouble for being rude to my wife and help there would be appreciated too.

 

[Twilight]

The "click" may be the "click of death", which refers to HDD failure when the drive head breaks off and starts flinging around in the chamber on top of the disk. It's a nasty failure.

If that's the case, your data is technically recoverable if it's super important to you - but you'd have to send it in as the disk needs to be physically removed and installed in a new casing.

Of course that might not be your problem at all - we'd need more info! What does it say when you try to boot? A motherboard message telling you "OS not found" or something? If that's the case it's very likely a hard drive total failure.

 

[cheeseyfatmonkey]

The "click" may be the "click of death", which refers to HDD failure when the drive head breaks off and starts flinging around in the chamber on top of the disk. It's a nasty failure.

If that's the case, your data is technically recoverable if it's super important to you - but you'd have to send it in as the disk needs to be physically removed and installed in a new casing.

Of course that might not be your problem at all - we'd need more info! What does it say when you try to boot? A motherboard message telling you "OS not found" or something? If that's the case it's very likely a hard drive total failure.

Thanks. It doesn't say anything at all. I get the initial start up screen where you can hit F2 to enter set up and then a black screen with a cursor in the top corner.

While typing this it has moved past that screen to the loading bar with microsoft corporation underneath it and the clicking is still there but now there is beeping again. It doesn't sound healthy.

 

[cheeseyfatmonkey]

Now it has turned to the blue screen of death. It was only up for a few secs before shutting down but it said that the problem was with disk.sys

 

[cheeseyfatmonkey]

It's my hard drive that is buggered. Spoke to a nice man in India. Have managed to get my laptop on and now don't dare switch it off again.

I'm going to back up the files if it will let me.

Depsite having next day in home repair support the engineer can't come out until Monday when I'm at work.

Feeling sad now.

 

[cheeseyfatmonkey]

It's my hard drive that is buggered. Spoke to a nice man in India. Have managed to get my laptop on and now don't dare switch it off again.

I'm going to back up the files if it will let me.

Depsite having next day in home repair support the engineer can't come out until Monday when I'm at work.

Feeling sad now.

Sorry to bump my own thread but just in case anyone is wondering (and I doubt anybody is) after going to bed feeling slightly pissed off about killing my computer I awoke the next morning to find that my laptop now works perfectly again.

The only issue left is that Dell Dock has completed stopped working. I've tried uninstalling it and deleting the directory and then reinstalling it and still it refuses the work. Not sure if that was actually the problem. I'm now using rocketdock which is actually much better.

I'm going to assume that angels came to fix my laptop while I was asleep.

 

[USS KG5]

It's my hard drive that is buggered. Spoke to a nice man in India. Have managed to get my laptop on and now don't dare switch it off again.

I'm going to back up the files if it will let me.

Depsite having next day in home repair support the engineer can't come out until Monday when I'm at work.

Feeling sad now.

Sorry to bump my own thread but just in case anyone is wondering (and I doubt anybody is) after going to bed feeling slightly pissed off about killing my computer I awoke the next morning to find that my laptop now works perfectly again.

The only issue left is that Dell Dock has completed stopped working. I've tried uninstalling it and deleting the directory and then reinstalling it and still it refuses the work. Not sure if that was actually the problem. I'm now using rocketdock which is actually much better.

I'm going to assume that angels came to fix my laptop while I was asleep.

Your laptop overheated, and over a certain temperature will turn itself off and not boot up to protect itself.

I have known so many people caught out like this, but bottom line you never want to use a laptop propped on a bed or pillow or anything that stops any air flow for too long, cooling is very important to laptops.

Most often you find the cpu has heatsinks leading to a fan and a port on the side of the case, if this is covered in any way your CPU will heat up FAST. Modern CPUs have built in protection, so your shut down and when it cooled down it worked again, in the old days they would just cook away.

It is a good thing we live in the days of dedicated laptop CPUs as well, I remember laptops with P4 chips in tended not to last long.