Can't locate hard drive to reboot

[xmikealvarez]

Dell professional XP 1-2CPU STATES CAN NOT LOCATE HARD DRIVE. RAN DIAGNOSTIC TEST STILL STATES THE SAME. IT STATED for me to insert CD that came with laptop. Unfortunately I bought it at an estate sale. Needless to say I am NOT in possession of any CD's. What's my next play Tom?

 

[USAFRet]

Dell professional XP 1-2CPU STATES CAN NOT LOCATE HARD DRIVE. RAN DIAGNOSTIC TEST STILL STATES THE SAME. IT STATED for me to insert CD that came with laptop. Unfortunately I bought it at an estate sale. Needless to say I am NOT in possession of any CD's. What's my next play Tom?

Sounds like a possibly failed drive. Being a probable 10-15 year old system, that would not be unusual.

 

[william p]

I would try booting a Linux live DVD (be patient it's slow). Then you can look on the HDD and see if Dell has a recovery image partition installed. They often did this instead of a CD. You might contact Dell Community Forums. Dell Support is fussy about ownership and warranty issues, but the Forum has both users and Dell tech moderators and can be more useful many times.