Blue error message everytime I turn on my Inspiron 6400

Everytime I turn on my Inspiron 6400 and select whether to load Windows normally, in Safe Mode, or last known good configuration, I get this blue error message:



I suppose my best option is to phone Dell but does anyone have another possible solution?

Thank you

dhokes

 

Have you made any driver changes lately? Will a ctrl+f11 (I think that's it) restore to factory state be a disaster? If not, that might be a possibiity.
http://www.osronline.com/ddkx/ddtools/bccodes_9h9j.htm

 

Yes. I formatted my laptop and then reinstalled all the necessary drivers. After that I tried to repair MediaDirect using Short Repair.

The ctrl+f11 doesn't work aswell and now everytime I turn my laptop on, it tries to load up the Dell Recovery before the blue screen.

 

It's tough to know without seeing things, and I'm not sure how comfortable you are with this kind of stuff, but I guess if it were me, and I couldn't restore with ctrl+f11, I'd try to get into the BIOS and, if possible (meaning it's not all locked down), see if I could disable non-essential hardware and then boot to safe mode. Or call Dell, which maybe you've done by now. Good luck.

 

Myself and some others on nbr have had this same problem, and for me it happened only after repairing mediadirect. Request a new hard drive from dell with the factory image installed. If you want to reformat still after that, I would suggest not trying to fix mediadirect. Many people like it, but I do not think it is useful. It hasn't really shown me that much of a gain in battery life...

 

Thanks everyone so far.

I can get into the BIOS but how would I disable non-essential hardware?

Can't seem to get hold of Dell as their lines are closed.

 

It's all keyboard controlled, but there should be brief instructions when you get into the BIOS. I just checked mine and by using down arrow and enter keys, mostly, it's possible to disable things like integrated NIC, Firewire, USB hub, etc., as well as various wireless related things. ONE POSSIBLY IMPORTANT THING: though I don't really know about media direct (and don't have it), based on what ludayoda said, I'd first look for anything that seems related to media direct, and start by disabling that. Given your situation, you're not going to hurt anything by disabling some of these devices, and it might allow you to get past a bad driver, if that's the issue. (You probably want to keep track of everything you do (and maybe disable just one thing at a time), though there should be a "restore to defaults" option in the BIOS. My BIOS may be different than yours too. The thing is, this can be really painstaking and time-consuming, and even if you are able to narrow the problem down to one driver, you'll need a way to reinstall it, unless it's media-direct related, which you can live without for a while. It's been a while since I've had to do this sort of thing, and maybe somebody else will chime in.

 

IMO, the best thing to do is to contact Dell and request a new HDD (they'll send it to you). Most likely the boot code is messed up. This has happened to a few of our users after they repaired MD. I don't have an answer to why except that running MD repair caused the boot code to change and now it will not let you boot up properly. You might be able to fix this, but you'll have to follow the long method of MD Repair - I believe. You need to download a program and edit your partition. MarkMcK has details about it in his MediaDirect thread.

Personally, I just think it is easier to request a new HDD from them. They'll send it to you in about 2 business days.

 

Thank you all for your messages.

As I still can't connect to Dell's telephone lines and won't until Monday, I might aswell try any possible solutions.

This is a list of my partitions:
-: Partition1 [FAT] = 86 MB (78 MB free)
D: Partition2 [NTFS] = 108188 MB (102830 MB free)
E: Partition3 [FAT32] = 4754 MB (1059 MB free)
Unpartitioned space = 8 MB
C: Partition4 [Unknown] = 1435 MB (1435 free)

Originally before this problem, I think I had something along the lines of:
-: Partition1 [FAT] = 86 MB (78 MB free)
C: Partition2 [NTFS] = 108188 MB (102830 MB free)
D (or E, not too sure ): Partition3 [FAT32] = 4754 MB (1059 MB free)


Is it possible/worthwhile trying to delete unpartitioned space and partition 4 and rename partition 2 to C and 3 to E?

Thanks again to everyone

 

You could always try it, but I doubt if it will work. If this is still under warranty, you will save yourself a lot of time/stress by just chatting with dell and getting them to send you a new hard drive. If you are having trouble connecting to dells customer service lines, use dell chat. They send it very promptly, and all you have to do is stick it in the hard drive slot. If you have data that you need to recover from the hard drive, there was one person here who used linux to get any data. Forgot the thread name, but you can just do a search it should come up.

 

I think I had the same message but it flashed by too quickly to see before it restarted the computer (thus creating an infinite loop). I think I did something wrong with installing WinXP Pro so I boot that up and reformatted everything.

 

Thank you everyone.

I haven't really had to contact Dell for any major problem so was wondering, should I request a new hard drive or just tell them my problem and they will automatically send one?

Also, when receiving the new hard drive. Do I just simple unscrew the two screws at the back, remove the old one, place the new one and screw back the screws? After this, would I need to do anything else or would the laptop be ready to run? In addition, would it be "as brand new", ie. with all the Dell junk?

Thank you once again

 

Do not just ask for a new hard drive, because then you will get charged. Tell them the problem, and they will most likely make you go through a bunch of diagnostic steps to see if the problem can be fixed...this is pretty much useless, but I guess required. When you receive the new hd, you will have to ship the old one back to them (in the same box, prepaid shipping). And yes, that it pretty much all you have to do for installing the hard drive. After you turn on your computer, the hd will automatically start installing all the programs/drivers that came originally with the comp.

 

Contacted Dell and a technician should be coming around tomorrow to change my hard drive.