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Dell 790 Optiplex

We seem to be having an issue with the Dell 790 Optiplex. I have contacted dell but their solution hasn't fixed the issue. I have a ghost image for all machines which is on various Dell Machines here. The issue with the optiplex 790 is is sometimes when it boots you get a message "hard drive not found" and it causes the machine to try to repair itself which it can't. I've been able to use the disk and run a repair and sometimes that works. If not I just throw the image on it again. This is happening to machines that we've already repaired. Dell gave me firmware update which hasn't solved this issue. I'm not 100% sure what this issue is. We even tried installing from scratch just in case it was the image but this issue is the same. Has anyone had this issue and if so what did you do? I even ran diagnostics but that shows nothing.

Alan OBrien

Are you ghosting back the full hard drive to the new drive, with the 100mb windows system partition as well as the c drive, if this is not there on the image then you will have issues at boot.

uescomp

I would try crystal disk to see if anything is scetchy with the smartboard on the hard drive. Also when you have that issue, check (feel) the hard drive and see if you can tell if it is spinning up or not (delayed start).

Couple troubleshooting things you could do if it is not the hard drive.

1) Switch out the sata and power cables
2) Plug the sata into a different sata port on the board
3) Ghost a duplicate hard drive and when this issue pops up connect the backup hard drive and see if it boots.

Overall when you have this issue do you see the target drive in the BIOS?

I would as stated above download crystal disk and check the smartboard status, that will tell you if something is not right with the HD

WellingtonIS

ASKER

No the drive doesn't show up in the bios. I've tried to re-seat the drive but still no luck with that. I'll try Crystal disk and see if that shows anything thanks. Which Crystal disk do I use? I have windows 7 32 bit.

JohnnyCanuck

It sounds to me like the issue is with the hard drive itself rather than anything to do with the motherboard. Do you have a different disk drive you can install (should be different make/model) to test with?

WellingtonIS

ASKER

I can however, it will not show up right away. But the thing is I can't get the drives replaced unless I can prove it to Dell.

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uescomp

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WellingtonIS

ASKER

Just ran a disk repair and it's ran a diagnostic and this time it came up with System volume on disk is corrupt. this is because it couldn't find the drive.

WellingtonIS

ASKER

Will try thanks.

WellingtonIS

ASKER

OK ran the program and I'm not sure of the results. IT says caution

05 Reallocated Sectors Count - current 100 Worst 100 Threshold 36 Raw values 18
Current Pending Sector Count - current 99 Worst 99 Threshold 0 Raw values 17
Uncorrectable Sector Count - current 99 Worst 99 Threshold 0 Raw Values 17

nobus

that show problems with your disk
try running HDDregenerator (not free) : http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html

WellingtonIS

ASKER

Perhaps a call to Dell to try to get them replaced might do

nobus

sure - try it, and show this evidence

WellingtonIS

ASKER

I convinced Dell based upon this information from that software that the drive was bad. thanks for pointing me in the right direction.