Dell Inspiron 570 Boot Trouble

[Xnaut]

Hello World! A few weeks back my Dell started acting up after being shutdown for the night. When I try to turn it on the screen shows that no "boot device available" or "HDD failure." Funny thing is when I shutdown through my power button and try turning it on again, it works normally and Windows boots up.

I read online that it may be the CMOS, nope. Tried to replace the old SATA cables in hopes that there was a bad connection with my old ones, nope. Tried defragmenting(Surprised that I had 7.0gb worth of data fragmented, then again I got the computer back in '09 and never did defragment it) because Windows may have had its boot sectors messed up, nope. Tried switching the placement of the new SATA cables, moved HDD to SATA-1, CD Drive to SATA-0, nope.

When I was testing my new SATA cables by powering up, shutting down, and powering up right after shutdown a few times, Windows loaded normally. But when I waited for five minutes and then tried to turn it on, I got the "HDD failure." But it still worked after I tried turning it on the second time around.

Another funny thing that I saw after switching the SATA placement, was when I logged in I got a little Windows detecting hardware symbol, with it popping up and telling me that it installed new drivers for my CD Drive, and HDD.

Anyone have an idea as to what I should try to do next?

 

[i7Baby]

Back up data from your HDD.

Run Checkdisk on your HDD. And use the manufacturer's diagnostic software (eg WD - Lifeguard, Seagate - Seatools) too.

 

[John Connor]

What does HDtune say about your hard drive?

 

[bdd4]

Before you go one step further, if you have not done so, please backup all of your "valuables". I am running a Dell Vostro 470
and suggest you open your machine up and thoroughly remove all dust. Using a small artists' paint brush with soft bristles and a vacuum cleaner,
clean everything in sight. I do the same with my system. I notice that periodically it has overheat problems due to dust buildup. When it is dust logged the cooling fans become audible and I know I need to go through a dust cleanout. Be especially careful to remove all dust from the finned aluminum heat sink on top of the CPU.Check your CMOS settings,you may need to modify bootup parameters.I am going through the pain of a dying SSD which periodically locks up. If you have a spare bootable hard drive, try booting up with it to determine whether you may have drive problems. Hope this helps.

 

[Ketchup]

Sounds like the drive or the power supply. If the computer boots up fine every time, until it gets to the hard drive detection, it is probably the drive. Since it only fails on detecting the drive, and not actually running the drive, it could be a power issue with the drive itself.

One other thing you can do to test is to swap power connections, with either a free one, or one from the DVD drive and see if things change.