(no subject)

[dolari]

Well, they don't make them like they used to.

I turned on my laptop, it beeped at me, then made a nice little chirping noise, then one beep, four beeps, then six beeps. Followed by "No Bootable Devices" and a HDD Error Code failure.

My Latitude L400, in reality just a Sony VAIO rebranded, took a tumble down a flight of concrete stairs in 2003. It turned on and worked like a champ. This thing, I move it from the bedroom to the kitchen table, and it craps out on me.

At least it's inside 30 days of purchase, so I get a brand new part...but yeesh. Dell doesn't make it's laptops like it used to.

I wont see the HDD until Monday, so I guess I'm stuck out in the living room until then. Or maybe I can cannibalize some of the old L400's HDDs and get the system at least running Windows....

Thankfully, all my work is on the fileserver, and I'd made a ghost of the laptop from BEFORE I even turned it on.

Oi...what a pain....

UPDATE: No can do - my old drives a Parallel, the new one is SATA. Hmmm...maybe it's time to make that "XP on a chip" thing....

Comments

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...maybe it's time to make that "XP on a chip" thing....

It's called Windows XP Embedded. :-)

[soltice.livejournal.com]

Maybe one of these?

[moiety-tx.livejournal.com]

if you're comfortable in linux, i'd consider making a 'livecd' type thing on a usb key; it boots in like 15 seconds, it's kind of crazy. Also...I still work for the 4-letter company, if you want me to doublecheck on anything in the order.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I actually never thought of that. I have an old Knoppix CD lying around somewhere, I should try that. Thanks!

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I tried a few LiveCD, Live USBs and they didnt' seem to like my system. Out of frustration, I grabbed an old Knoppix CD I made a year or two ago and WHALA! It worked!

Thanks for the advice!

[audaciousd.livejournal.com]

When, you want, the great taste of XP inachip...

< inevitable >

[kisai.livejournal.com]

My team lead at work bought a dell laptop and promptly returned it DOA. nice.

[kisai.livejournal.com]

you can still get PATA drives, laptop and desktop size, though they top out at 80GB for laptops and 320 for desktop sized for the most part.

New systems, don't even crack it open. Like someone else said earlier, use Knoppix, and salvage anything on it. You could even network-boot the laptop if you have such a service running on a server somewhere.

(Done it with NT4, perfectly plausable to do with linux)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I managed to pop up Knoppix. It couldn't see the HDD, and all the other HDD recovery utilities I've ::cough::aquired::cough:: just come up with read error anytime they try to just see if there is a drive there. I think it's toast. Ah, well, I can always replay the sims....