dell laptop not booting.

[Pragadheesh]

hi,
1)my bro's dell laptop(inspiron 1420) which runs on vista 'failed to start due to some recent hardware or software change'. this is the error that i get when it turn on the laptop.
it has a "Launch Startup repair" option.
proceeding through the 'System Recovery Option', it asks me to load driver for my hard drive.
where can i find the driver for the hard drive?

i installed partition magic and came to know that it is not compatible with vista. then i tried uninstalling and ended up with this problem.

how can i fix it?
2)can i install xp on this laptop i.e downgrading to xp. will xp be compatible or do i need any drivers to make xp work?

help me at the earliest.
thanks in advance.

 

[ten24bytes]

It seems that you have recently played with your BIOS settings and changed the IDE mode of the HDD to AHCI rather than SATA...

You needn't worry as you can revert back to SATA and continue with a proper booting Vista.

Just go into the BIOS (Dell's BIOS is the best I've ever seen till date), and you'll see a section where there's the option to select IDE mode between SATA & AHCI.

Choose SATA and voila, it will be fine once again.

AHCI is the latest techonology for hard disks *en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI

If you want to choose AHCI, then there are dirvers provided on the Resource DVD under Intel Matrix or RAID (soomething like that). Extract them to a USB drive and then reinstall Vista or any other OS.

In the beginning each OS's installation asks for 3rd party SCSI/RAID drivers. There you have to install these as per the instructions.

In Vista's installlation it asks for these drivers where you have the option of selecting the partition on which to install Vista.

It'll be given below as "Load Drivers"...
Mind it you can choose AHCI only with a fresh install and not after installing on a SATA configured HDD.

That's it mate... I hope your lappy will be fine...

 

[Pragadheesh]

i did never play with bios, as its ma bro laptop. and only after this problem i went to bios for the 1st time.
in bios in the 'SATA operation' as you told, there are 2 options ACPI and ATA but it is set to ACPI.
so should i change it to ATA? because when i try so, it is giving a warning that "changing this setting may prevent the os from booting"

 

[ten24bytes]

Don't worry about that!! Just change it back to ATA... It should work fine..

I've solved the same problem on many of my friend's laptops! Its perfectly ok..

Your BIOS is an older version it seems...

 

[Pragadheesh]

i tried but did not work.the hard disk became unpartitioned space. i think this is the problem. partition magic made the hard drive to unpartitioned space and the computer cannot boot.
also i tried installing fresh copy of vista but it said that the partition should be in NTFS to install vista.
what to do? any solutions?

 

[Pragadheesh]

hey,anyone help me with the problem...

 

[gcbeldar]

IF DATA is not required.
Just Fresh Install Vista

 

[Pragadheesh]

as i mentioned earlier, i want to install fresh copy of vista. i dont need the data. but i can not do it, as the 230gb partition became 'unpartitioned space'. it tells that i can install only in a partition that is NTFS formatted.
solutions plz..

 

[ten24bytes]

Hey dude when you're installing Vista it gives you the option to make partitions where it asks you to select the partition on which to install Vista...

These options are hiden by default.

Just click on "Advanced..." below the window. And it'll show the options to create a new partition, delete, resize. etc...

 

[Pragadheesh]

i tried creating new partition as you told and i'm getting this error,
"Failed to create a new partition on the selected unused space. [Error.0x8004240f]". what to do?

 

[ten24bytes]

Dude, you'll have to do it the ahrd way round... (Though not impossible and as hard as it will seem to you!! )

Download Ranish Partition Manager *www.ranish.com/part/part240.zip

Make a bootable floppy or CD and extract the files of the archive on the floppy/CD..

Boot from the floppy and CD and launch part240.exe

There it'll give you a hell lotta options for drive formatting.

If you feel scared then you can try the simulator which is included in it. It has got all the options which are there in the original program, less the actual hardware implementation.

So try it out and I'm sure the problem won't persist thereafter...

PS As an afterthought, if you have heard of the Hiren's BootCD, then it can come in handy for you. It has got a plethora of tools to take care of your problem!

 

[Pragadheesh]

thanks for your response. i can up with a different solution and ended up with another problem. i used xp cd and deleted the drive(225gb) and created a new partition of 25gb and installed vista in it. but the rest 200gb remains as unpartitoned space. i cannot format or partition it. when i try to do so using xp cd or in vista disk mgmt, it says "Cannot create new partition in the space as maximum number of partitions already exist on the disk". why is this problem? is it that i can have only two drives(a rescue drive and one for os)?
how can i make use of this unpartitoned space?