TCH-Bruce Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop. I've had it 3 weeks and it is quite a nice machine. We went out of town for the weekend taking it along. When we returned home I plugged it in and powered it up and was making a copy of a CD when it froze. I held the power switch down until it powered off and then went to turn it back on and it could not find the hard drive. I tried several times and same thing, no hard drive detected. So I decided to contact Dell support. While talking to the support person he had me run through all the things I had already tried. Same results, no drive detected. It kept reporting with Error 1000-0146. So he said they would send a replacement drive. I didn't think much about it and just shut it off. Monday morning I tried powering it up again on battery power and it booted with no problem. So I shut it off and went to work. Came home and tried it again. Booted fine again. So I powered down and plugged it in and tried booting again. And it still boots. I've run all the diagnostics I can find and a scan disk and defragmented the drive and still no problems. I've made CD copies and still no problems. I received the replacement drive and am reluctant to put it in since I am not experiencing any problems now. I checked the Dell forums and others have had similar problems and they were told to remove and re-seat both the hard drive assembly and the DVD/CD drive. The tech never mentioned for me to try this. Could it be that something was just not seated properly and this happened or do you think there is actually something wrong with the hard drive? Sorry for the length of the post but I thought it might all be pertinent. Quote
TCH-Dick Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 Could be that it just wasnt seated properly and taking it on the trip with you (moving it around a lot and stuff) shook something loose JUST enuff to make it act up. If they dont require you to send the original drive back, I would just leave it as is, make a backup of your current files and keep the new drive for "just in case" Quote
Madmanmcp Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 Sorry, had to add some humor. I just worked on a Dell laptop for a friend and did not enjoy the outcome. Seems like that model 5160 had a lot of issues. If you search the internet you will find lots of complaints about it. In my instance it turned out to be an overheating problem that Dell refused to acknowlege and the only suggestions were to blow out the fan area with a can of air or keep it off a flat surface because the fan is located on the bottom. I had to teel the girl those were her two options and it would probably still run hot and lock up or buy a new laptop...her warranty had run out 1 month ago. Now I'm not sure if this overheating is whats causing your problem but it may be worth looking at. Quote
TCH-Dick Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 If its a heat issue, you can pick up a laptop cooler for about 10 bucks. I had one about a year ago and they work well. It sites under the laptop, and has 2-4 fans on it that cool from the bottom, most are USB powered and have an extra usb port on the cooler so that you dont lose a port. Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted November 24, 2004 Author Posted November 24, 2004 (edited) Thanks guys. Yes, I have to return one of the drives. They want $180 for the drive assembly with a 60GB drive. I will contact them tonight and see if I can just return the replacement drive instead of the one currently in the machine. What surprised me was they shipped a refurbished drive to replace the one in there. Bob, yes I've searched and found lots of poblems people were having. The laptop runs cooler than my wife's Sony laptop so I don't think it's a heat issue. I've run the thing for 12 hours a day since this happened and haven't had any problems. I just think that the DVD/CD drive wasn't seated properly. Since they are both on the same IDE channel would it report not seeing the hard drive? Mike, I've seen that cooler it's a good idea. Oh, I have a copy of V2i from PowerQuest and I can make image backups of the drive. So I think I will do that too. Edited November 24, 2004 by TCH-Bruce Quote
Madmanmcp Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 A Laptop top cooler...I'll have to look for that since this is a college student and she can't afford to buy another laptop. Unless you have a link handy? Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted November 24, 2004 Author Posted November 24, 2004 Here's one. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=984047&CatId=607 Quote
Madmanmcp Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 It might be as you say, just a seating problem. You moving around may have fixed it but may also be a temporary and become unseated again once you move. Now I don't know your experience with hardware but cracking open a laptop is totally different than working on a desktop and I don't recommend it for the faint of heart. But if you're game I would suggest at least reseating the cables. You can then be sure that it will not jar loose again. Quote
Madmanmcp Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 great! thanks for the link. I'll give it to her mom for a christmas present Quote
Head Guru Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 Motherboard! RMA the entire laptop. I had a dell, did the same thing. The mobo ended up dead at 6 months. Bill Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted November 24, 2004 Author Posted November 24, 2004 Well, it's only happened that one day and hasn't happened since. So I am not so sure about that. We sold the other Dell laptop that we had and it needed the motherboard replaced. Kept shutting itself off for no reason. Different model though. I'll keep a very close eye on it though. Maybe I'll stick with Sony laptops. Quote
Head Guru Posted November 24, 2004 Posted November 24, 2004 Could be bruce. Do yourself a favor and check out the Sager Laptops. They are EXCELLENT laptops. I am on my second one. Check this out. A list of laptop's I have owned and why they were replaced. eMachine - 1.5 years of use. Was a good machine, but could not take the abuse I threw at it. LCD Mounts broke and the LCD would not stand up anymore. Everyday machine. Tons of hours on it. Good value but not very fast. Sony - Dropped it once from the center armrest of my truck and it never booted again. Dell - Two bad mother boards. Never again. Gateway - Good unit, currently being used by Mike Herman. Sager - Excellent Machine. Used by my entire family. at least used 10 hours per day. Never has had a issue. I am currently on my second sager. I love these laptops! HP - Screen went bad after 13 months of heavy use. Sold on ebay for parts. Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted November 24, 2004 Author Posted November 24, 2004 Bill I have a friend that swears by the Sager laptops. He's on his second too. And it's a nice unit, even has a built-in camera above the LCD. I've had these: NEC - just ran and ran and ran never had a problem with it. Toshiba - never had any problems with it either Hitachi - nice and never had issues with it either. Person I sold it to is still using it. Dell - bad motherboard Sony - over a year old and runs like a clock Dell - current issue stated above. If the motherboard goes in it I will never own another Dell laptop. But I couldn't pass on the deal. Got it for $750 off. Quote
Head Guru Posted November 25, 2004 Posted November 25, 2004 Bruce - I would highy suggest you take a look at this site before buying your next lappy. h**p://notebookforums.com/ Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted November 25, 2004 Author Posted November 25, 2004 Thanks for the link! I've bookmarked it. Don't plan on buying another for a while. Quote
surfdean Posted November 25, 2004 Posted November 25, 2004 Hello all, I too have a "tempermental" laptop. Every 1/2 hour to 2-3 hours of use it freezes. I am forced to power down with the button (keyboard doesn't work) and upon reboot, it can't find the hard drive. Luckily, there is a removable type drive interface, and the *only* way I can get it to boot again is to pull the drive and re-seat it. I think it's a dell clone, but there are no identifying stickers left (it's a Pentium 233). Aside from old age, i have the feeling it is a bios issue. I have a 20gig drive but the bios says it's 8gig... really can't wait to get a new machine, but am stuck with this for another few weeks at least. On the bright side, I have a newfound appreciation for the save button dean Quote
lishikawa Posted April 11, 2005 Posted April 11, 2005 This document is returned in the google search topic, so I am posting what I've learned today. I received the same exact error. I re-seated my memory, hd, and cd-rom and it didn't help so I called Dell. According to the dell tech (we have a gold package), the error code 1000-0146 only indicates that there are logged items in the hd. It DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR HD IS BAD. That said, I continued to execute the diagnostics, and discovered that the lcd/video card on my d800 was defective. Fortunately for me, we have a 3yr on-site warranty still in effect so Dell is coming out tomorrow to fix these problem(s). I also asked the rep if there is a way to extract out the dst log and the rep told me no. I am disappointed by the error code as it is mis-leading, nor does it tell me what it is. After a brief search, I can not find information on this right now. If I do find something, I will update this forum. Good Luck! Leigh Quote
lishikawa Posted April 13, 2005 Posted April 13, 2005 Thanks. So the tech came in yesterday and swapped out the lcd and video card. He said that is an code is errorneous and everyone ignores it. Instead, a full gui diag should be executed instead! For the person who ran into the problem, s/he should get the diagnostic disk and run through the full gambit of tests to see what the real problems are... Good Luck! Quote
TCH-Bruce Posted April 13, 2005 Author Posted April 13, 2005 Hi Leigh, that was me. I did run the full diagnostics and there was nothing wrong with the machine. I sent back the replacement drive they sent me and have not had any issues with the laptop since that happened. Glad your issues are resolved. Quote
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