No Hard Drive - Dell Laptop - Help needed!

My father-in-law has a Dell laptop (Inspiron 1100) that he bought in 2003 and is now out of warranty. He had used AOL ever since he first started online in 1996. He would call me frequently with problems on his laptop that usually stemmed from AOL conflicting with other stuff on the computer (e.g. the AOL Security system said his wireless card software was buggy and needed to be uninstalled). I finally told him that I refused to work with his laptop anymore if he insisted on continuing to use AOL and, to my surprise, he said that I could uninstall it. (AOL was not even his ISP anymore but he was continuing to use the AOL suite for any of his online activities.)

I took the laptop and uninstalled AOL after transferring all his email and favorites to Yahoo and Firefox respectively. I rebooted the laptop several times and surfed online using the Belkin wireless card for an hour and then shut it down and told him it was ready. The next day he came over and I turned it on and got the message "Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Not Found." The BIOS listed "NONE" as primary hard drive.

After googling, I surmised that the HDD had died and a new one would be needed. I bought a new HDD on Ebay and it arrived yesterday and I installed it today. I continue to get the message "Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Not Found". I have run system diagnostics and the only test that would not pass was the CDROM read test but all other tests passed.

Did I kill the laptop or is there anything else I can do before I look like a complete idiot to my father-in-law?

 

I don't think that you killed his laptop. It's been my experience with the Dell Inspiron 1100 series and 5100 series (they're almost identical) that they frequently have faulty IDE controllers. I have seen MANY hard drives get burned up for no apparent reason, and when a new drive is installed, it gets burned up too (if not right away, then in less than 48 hours). The IDE controllers tend to fail after about 3-4 years of use, and from what you posted above, that's about where this PC is. There isn't alot you can do except replace the motherboard but in the end, you'd probably be asking for more problems doing that. Just tell him the truth, and suggest that next time to buy a better laptop; either have a small, local, independent PC store custom build one, or if brand names are preferred, go with Toshiba. In my experience, Toshiba's tend to last longer, perform better, and have MANY fewer problems overall. By all means, DO NOT buy a Gateway laptop..... good luck!

hd2k

:major Welcome to Major Geeks! :major

 

Looks like Hooperdave2000 gave you some good info. I just had one thought that might possibly help. On my dell laptop, there was an adapter on the original hard drive (it died) that I had to pull off and put on the new drive for it to work. Had me confused for a little while until I put the drives side by side, I saw the difference then.

Not sure if the Inspiron 1100 has the same adapter as my inspiron 600m, but it might be worth a quick look.

E

 

Thank you gentlemen for your input! It appears that Fred_G was correct about the adapter and the new hard drive is now loading Windows as we speak. Hopefully, all else will go well - thanks again!

 

Glad you are up and running!

E

 

Well I'll be..... I'm glad the PC is OK but keep in mind that the 1100's and 5100's tend to have faulty IDE controllers, and it could go out at any time. Keep any important data backed up!

hd2k