Have a dell laptop that died at the weekend.
Unmountable boot volume error (which is not uncommon) so the plan would be to stick in the XP disc and boot from there fix the bin file and hooray.
Slight problem is that around 6 months back the disc drive broke and I haven't replaced it.
If I replace the disc drive with the same item is it likely to work or is there a way I can work around this without spending more money?
Thanks
J
Essentially, you need a means of running chkdsk /f on that machine. If your optical drive is beggered, you could try building a bootable USB key perhaps. Seek out a guide on the Internet, it's not straight-forward. See [url= http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm ]here[/url] for ideas. I've used HP's drivekey utility in the past, but there's a few ways of doing it.
The other approach would be to strip out the drive and mount it as a secondary device in another machine temporarily. Depending on the type of drive in the laptop and the spare machine, there might be cabling issues here; a SATA / IDE to USB cable is probably the easiest way of doing it.
Bugger I figured as much. I have had it in mind to buy a new drive for a while just never got around to it. If I did by one the same as the one in it now is it likely to be plug and play? Bearing in mind the state of the machine will a new drive need an install I can't perform as I can't boot up?
Yes sticking an identical or compatible drive optical drive will work.
+1 - replace the drive if your not a geek to make a pen drive bootable?
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Try this though?
http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html
Thanks all much appreciated.
J
What model of Dell is it? Is it in warranty?
If its in warranty let me know and I will give you the part numbers for the CD and hard disk drives and the number to call - if its not the same part numbers work a treat on ebay to make sure you get the right thing..
Cheers,
David.