Computer Geeks Unite! And farging help me!

[Diomedes]

Wiped means cleaned, not murdered.  The hard drive is a physical thing.  It holds the programs that we use.  One of those programs is the basic one, the operation system.  Windows.  Linux, etc.  Your machine no longer has an operating system in it.  That's what it means that the hard drive was wiped.

You need to do what GF said:  get an OS.  It needs to be on a disk.  You can buy the disk, or borrow it, or steal it.  Put the disc in the computer and follow instructions.

[PhillyPhanInDC]

without getting into where it came from i know for a fact the hard drive has been wiped....if thats the case can what you are saying still work?

It takes a couple of minutes to find out. Usually when laptops are prepared to be sold, people format the portion of the hard drive where the operating system resides (called a partition). If it was a government laptop, they'd have overwritten the drive several times, but them removed the drive and disposed of it before sending it to DRMO. Try what I said - if it works, you won't have to buy anything at all and it'll be working in less than 30 minutes. If you want, shoot me a PM and I'll pass you my cell and I can walk you through it - depending on which side of D.C you're on I could even meet you and do the whole thing for you.

[ice grillin you]

thanks ill try that first....its not govt....but im not sure if it has a hard drive....ftr our agency doesnt ever remove hard drives when excessing computers...they wipe them the we usually give them to schools to use

lets say it doesnt have a hard drive....is it even worth buying one or at that point would you just buy a whole new computer

[Diomedes]

If you're so god damn rich, why are you wasting our time with this anyway?

Recycle the farging thing and go buy a new one.

[PhillyPhreak54]

lol...yeah man - donate that shtein and buy a new one

[Sgt PSN]

Havas is most entertaining when he asks computer questions.

[Diomedes]

It is rather cute.  I pity him in a kindly way.

[ice grillin you]

i just bought a new one last year....i figured this would be my second floor computer if it was easy and cheap enough to get up and runnin...apparently its not

[PhillyPhanInDC]

You'd know when attempting to boot it if it didn't have a hard drive - it'd tell you one wasn't detected. I should have prefaced my earlier comments by saying the DoD usually discards the drive - I forget who you work for, but DoT or DoS may do it differently.

Again, shoot me a PM and I'll pass you my cell # and when you are in front of it you can give me a buzz, and I can walk you through the options. If you need a media (OS) CD, Dell will likely you sell a recovery CD for you model for about eight bucks. That's if there isn't a recovery partition already on the laptop, which I think is pretty likely.

Here is the link to request the recovery CDs:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form

I wouldn't order them until you are sure the laptop doesn't have a recovery partition present.

[ice grillin you]

yeah go ahead and pm me your cell....ill probably try it on saturday

btw not sure if you saw it or really read it but this was my first post with the message im getting when i boot up....not sure if it tells you either way about whether it has a hard drive or not

no boot sector on internal hard drive - no bootable devices - strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup ability - press F5 to run onboard diagnostics

[PhillyPhanInDC]

Tells me the hard drive is in the machine, but boot sector, basically the initial start up info for the operating system has been damaged or deleted. You don't have to buy a hard drive - so now we just have to figure out if you have a recovery partition, or need to get the CD from Dell. Either way, you're golden.

[ice grillin you]

Tells me the hard drive is in the machine, but boot sector, basically the initial start up info for the operating system has been damaged or deleted. You don't have to buy a hard drive - so now we just have to figure out if you have a recovery partition, or need to get the CD from Dell. Either way, you're golden.

nice...so still try the f8 thing before i do anything else....right?

[PhillyPhreak54]

So apparently my hard drive on my Toshiba C650 laptop has crashed.

Last night I accidentally turned on the hibernate mode. It would not exit the mode and I turned it off and then back on. When I turned it on it took forever to reboot and for anything to start up.

Today I tried to turn it on and it again took forever to boot.

So I started in safe mode and tried to do a recovery to the last point and I thought it did.

I went to restart under normal and got a blue screen with notes about something happening and if it was the first time I've seen it to restart.

I restarted and then got a black screen.

I put in the recovery disk and it began to boot up and then stopped and gave me an error code. The error code is F3-F100-0003.

I've tried running the recovery disk and it comes back to that error.

When I look at the setup utility it doesn't recognize a HDD.

What the farg?!

How much is a new hard drive?

[General_Failure]

Dirt cheap.

[PhillyPhreak54]

How easy are they to replace? If I can't do it how much can I expect to pay?

Once it's in do I just run the recovery disks I have (four of them from when I bought it).