Dell Inspiron 500m laptop HDD failed - options?

[Taz]

I've got an old Dell Inspiron 500m laptop. I think the HDD is knackered as it doesn't boot into Windows XP anymore but says various sys files are missing. I still have the original Windows XP disk and the Drivers and Utilities disk that was supplied by Dell with the laptop. What I would like to do is replace the HDD in this laptop and reinstall XP on it as the screen is fine.

So, where can I buy an internal hard disk for the Dell Inspiron 500m laptop? I'd like to be able to use it just for emails and Web surfing. I assume I can legally reinstall the copy of XP that came with the laptop in the case of HDD failure?

[peterb]

Unless it is a specific OEM part - any drive ofthe same physical size and type will work. You need to remove and inspect it!

Yes you can re-install the OEM copy of XP that came with the machine - using the licence code that should be stiuck onto the machine's case.

[staffsMike]

Check whether it is SATA or PATA (probably PATA) and then just get any old drive, all dell uses normal HDD's and are normally as easy as two screws to change them

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

[arthurleung]

It just use a bog-standard IDE harddrive.

Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400rpm 8MB Cache - OEM - Ebuyer
Something like this should work.
I bought this about 3 weeks ago for 56 quids, price went up :S

Also, make sure you check the height of the harddrive. Some laptop drives are thicker (i think 12.5mm vs normal 9.5mm) which may not fit in your laptop.

[Behemoth]

ebay has plenty of drives going cheap so also might be worth a look there. Just had a similar thing happen on a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop, bought a 40 gig HDD off my Dad that came out of his compaq laptop and well bobs your uncle, all fixed and the laptop is on ebay

[Agent]

If you can hold on till next week Taz, I should have a 30gig that you have can for cheap

[Taz]

^ Thanks for the offer Agent, but I've just ordered a 120GB 2.5" drive. But thanks anyway. I've played safe as the laptop is a few years so didn't go for the 250GB drive.

I've never replaced a laptop HDD before but it appears to be easier than replacing a PC's HDD. It appears that there are two common heights for 2.5" laptop drives: 9.5mm and 12.5mm. My laptop takes 9.5" so I had to check the Western Digital manufacturers site for the height of the drive that I ordered. My main concern was the legality of reusing the Dell XP CD with a new drive and I wasn't quite sure what the situation was. I've read the notes on the XP CD cover and it clearly states that it can be used for reinstalling Windows XP.

Regrettably i've lost everything on the failed HDD but I was fortunate enough to have a USB external hard drive connected with the most important data backe up onto it.

[Taz]

Well, the plot has thickened on this problem. I researched the problem quite extensively on the Internet over the weekend and found what I believe to be the true root cause.

Firstly the symtoms: Windows will not boot and complains about missing or corrupt pci.sys (or other .sys files), straight after the POST. It suggests trying to repair these files using the original Windows XP CD-ROM and selecting the repair option.

So, I went ahead and inserted the original Windows XP CD, changed the boot order to boot off CD first in the BIOS and Windows XP setup started but failed when it tried to read a particular file from the Windows XP CD. An example of the error during the initial (blue screened background) setup phase of Windows XP was:

File setupdd.sys could not be loaded. The error code is 4

I was a bit deflated when I couldn't even run the Windows XP setup and was resigning myself to binning the laptop! Researching this issue on the Internet suggested a memory problem rather than a hard disk problem (as was originally suspected).

Microsoft has a KB article for this error:

Windows XP problems with damaged or incompatible hardware

So, this pointed to the memory being faulty or not seated correctly. I removed the two 512MB SODIMMs from the laptop, cleaned the edge connectors and reseated them firmly and all is well.

I'm still going to upgrade the HDD and i've ordered new memory from Dell themselves (2 x 1GB SODIMMs) as I want to give the laptop a new lease of life and get a couple more years of service from it.

[this_is_gav]

Running Memtest will tell you whether the cause was faulty RAM or not. I know you've addressed the situation, but it would be nice to know whether the existing RAM should be chucked or not.