Need help fixing a laptop

[Killer Munkey]

Hey guys.

My roommate handed me his girlfriends laptop and asked me if i can fix it and i said sure. But i have no experience with laptops. Atm all the laptop will do is bootup (get past POST but then sit at a blank screen after that). I have a hunch it might be the HD dying so i ran the diagostic utility built into the board and everything passed except the last one which gave an error message of

DST short test: ERROR
and then some other letters and numbers that made no sense to me. The only word i managed to pick out was something about Drive.

Is there a better utility (bootable cd) that i can use to confirm that its just the HD? Or is there other ways to test it out?

[Kev_Dawg]

You can try reseting the bios to see if they screwed around with something that they were not suppose to touch causing the hang. If that does not work, try uninstalling the OS and then install a fresh copy back on the labtop.

[Killer Munkey]

Its was a 2 week old copy of windows i put on the laptop. So i doubt the OS is shot. But i'll probably try to reformat it again anyways to see if your idea works kev.

I wrote down the error code for DST

Its Error Code: 1000 - 0146

I've tried looking at a table of what each DST error code means but i can't make heads or tails out of it.

[Kev_Dawg]

Well, try reinstalling windows with a fresh copy, then see if that works, if it doesn't then it may be a hard drive malfunation. I would of thought if you reset the bios to factory settings it would help, but I guess it didn't.

[Snafu]

Take a look at the manufacturer's site of the drive or laptop manufacturer for a HDD utility. A quick google for "Error Code: 1000 - 0146" came up with a number of hits and the first few indicate a hard drive problem.

You could try a fresh install as it is cheaper alternative to a new drive but then again you never know if the drive will fail again. IF it does work and your friend is happy with it tell them to make daily back-ups or risk loosing whatever they have on the drive.

I would try the disk utility and see if it helps. I would explain to your friend that the drive is likely gone and if they want to buy a new drive to be installed (get them to pay for the drive before you order it).

[Snafu]

Oh and read this and see if it helps 'Hard Drive Diagnosis (http://www.hddsaver.com/content/20/index.html)

[Killer Munkey]

I'll reinstall windows and read through that hard drive guide you linked snafu.

As for looking for a utlity from the manufacture, its a Dell laptop. I'm not sure what manufacture made the drive or which one it is but i looked around on dell's site and searched with google and come up with nothing that related to diagonstics for a HD from Dell.