kybowexar

Dell Dimension 4550 - turned off the night before, when restarted informed me that it could not find the hard drive. After repeated attempts to boot - both the drive and off a CD, still nothing. I tried DOS CHKDISK - could not find drive. Tried re-installing Windows - no drive detected.

It is six years old, opened once about a year ago to upgrade the memory. I suspect I now own a rather nice brick. Any chance I can save the hard drive and reuse it - or do I need to just buy another computer?

Thank you,

Larry

raptor_pa

It sounds like the brick part is probably the hard drive apparently it is booting to the Windows install CD correct? This would indicate the rest of the PC is functional.. 6 years is a great life span for a hard disk. I would try replacing that before I replaced the PC. Of course by the same token 6 years is a great life span for a PC too, you might just want to upgradeeverything and replace the PC. A newer modern high capacity drive may not even be recognized by your BIOS.

kybowexar

Thanks for the reply.

That is my concern as well. Ironically, I had been looking to upgrade our drive (it is too small for Vista Ultimate) and noticed warnings about BIOS being unable to handle a new drive.

I had a feeling already, but wanted to convince my wife that I am not just suffering "new computer" fever. She does not understand that guys like me have "new computer" fever the moment the "old" one is plugged in.

No, we bought this one with the plan it would last awhile - and yes, you are right - six years is not a bad life span for a computer.

If anyone else has any ideas, I'm open - but figure I'll start looking around for a new one this week.

Thank you.

raptor_pa

I doubt the hardware after 6 years would run Vista at an acceptable speed, if at all, drivers for some of the hardware may not even be available for Vista.