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Hard disk problem...?

I have a Dell Inspiron which I got about a year & a half ago. It has a 300G HD & 2M RAM. This week I received a Windows message on the screen that "Windows detected a hard disk problem." Now when I reboot, I get a message before the computer starts up saying "Hard Drive Self Monitoring System has reported that a parameter is out of range. Dell recommends that you back up your data regularly. A parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard drive problem."

I am no longer under warranty & must figure this out. My data is backed up. Is there a diagnostic that can check & repair this issue? The message is so vague to me I don't know where to begin.

5 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Go to Microsoft .com and chat with a specialist hell know for sure. It's on the support page

  • ?
    Lv 4
    4 years ago

    some working structures, inclusive of domicile windows XP, won't show you how to format apersistent in FAT32 mode any larger than 32GB. you may study the official article from Microsoft I lined as a source. I without notice met this subject years in the past. What I did at that element became ran the FDISK application and partitioned my puzzlingpersistent (which became a 40GB) right into a C: logicalpersistent that became 8GB and a D: logicalpersistent that became 32GB in length. in spite of the shown fact that, now domicile windows promises the skill to format thepersistent in NTFS mode instead of FAT32. I did that on my extra cutting-edge drives and function had no issues ever considering the fact that. bear in mind that in case you have older application that additionally runs in DOS mode, you're able to run into issues employing NTFS formatted drives. domicile windows XP would not seem to shield the older application properly.

  • 9 years ago

    Go into BIOS and disable Smart Monitoring and you won't get that message again. Defrag the hard drive.

  • 9 years ago

    reboot your computer.

    watch the bottom for the boot menu (usually f12)

    tap the key it says, and select hard drive diagnostics.

    if it says there is a problem, contact dell and they will test it and send you a new drive,.

  • Kevlar
    Lv 4
    9 years ago

    run this:

    http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/i...

    if it says caution or Bad under heath status then replace the hard drive if it says Good then its probably a virus

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