dell 1545 laptop will not boot from cd

[RoHe]

If you received a Drivers and Utilities CD from Dell along with your system, see if it boots from that disk.

If it boots, run the diagnostics from that CD.

Ron

[Hoov]

Try running the program CD that you made again.

[khatru7491]

Can I load win7 on the laptop HD through my desktop running the HD on an external sata enclosure?
And if so how would I do it as I've never tried it before.

[Hoov]

I think it is possible, but I don't recommend it. When you install windows 7 it installs a lot of the drivers for your hardware. One thing you can try is stick in in the external enclosure and format the entire drive. Use the NTFS file system. Then stick it back into the laptop and see if it is recognized when you try to install windows.

[khatru7491]

I ran the hard drive through AVG and came up with 24 Trojans and 3 corrupted exe files. I allowed AVG to deal with them and then tried it in the laptop-no joy. Tried formatting the hard drive as suggested and that also got the same old result.

F5 brings up a diagnostic and it produced an error code - 0146 "HD self test log contains previous errors."
A 2nd run through produced an error code - 0152 "Optical Drive 0 incorrect status: 1A error register: 0020h."

Is that any help?

[Hoov]

I thought this was a new harddrive? Or is it just new to you, but recycled from another computer?

The error code on the harddrive means the drive is failing. The error for the CD drive, you need to take the drive out of the computer and then reinstall it.

[khatru7491]

Sorry for the confusion.
There are actually 3 hard drives available. 1 new (Western Digital) and 2 old (Toshiba).
When I put the WD in the external enclosure connected to my desktop nothing shows.
The one Toshiba had an o/s on it but was formatted and shows blank. The other Toshiba that is failing is out of the mix.

Running the F5 diagnostic I got the optical error when the Dell 'Drivers and Utilities' CD was left in the drive. I didn't get it when running it with no disk in the drive.

[Hoov]

If the new drive does not show up when in the external enclosure, then there is something wrong with the drive. Send it back.

The F5 diagnostic will only have a failure on the optical drive if there is a disc in the drive. If there is nothing in it, it can't run a full test. I would still try uninstalling and then reinstalling it.

[khatru7491]

The HD is going back (online purchase).

You're just talking about taking the optical drive out and putting it back in again?
That ought to tell you what a novice I am at laptops. Guess I better learn though.

[Hoov]

You're just talking about taking the optical drive out and putting it back in again?

From what I found out about the error code, that is all you have to do. At least as a first step.

[khatru7491]

I took it out & put it back in, ran F5 test with Dell Drivers & Utilities disc in it and got the same error code.
Ran the same test with an old Works 9 disc and didn't get the error code.
WTH?

[Hoov]

Not sure why that happens, that is a fairly specific error.

Try formatting the one harddrive that is left in the external enclosure, then stick it in and see if you can install a copy of windows on it.

[khatru7491]

I used diskpart to remove the OEM partition, Disk Management to remove the other partition, reformatted and still no joy.
F5 diagnostic gave optical error w/Win7-64 disk in drive. The kicker is I didn't get the error with the Dell Drivers and Utilities disk in drive.

[Hoov]

Is your optical drive a CD drive or a DVD drive? It is beginning to look like it is a CD drive. If that is the case, windows 7 is on a DVD and the drive can't read it.

[khatru7491]

No, the drive is a DVD/CD player and the whole project is out of my hands now as I just had all my teeth removed and my wife is having it fixed by the guy who sold her the HD. She refuses to let me do anything harder than lay in bed, try to eat and go too the bathroom until the swelling goes down and it heals to the point where I won't need the strong painkillers which will affect my thinking anyways.
So thanks for your help once again and if you're interested I'll drop you an email with the final results.
james