Dell Inspiron 531 will not boot.

[HollyBee63]

I have a black screen with five lines of text. The very first line says that there is no boot device available. The next two lines show SATA 0 and SATA 1 as being installed. The next two lines show SATA 2 & 3 as "NONE". I have no computer experience or knowledge beyond basic operation and use. Can a lay person repair this and is it even repairable?

Thanks,
Holly

 

[noidea_77]

Hi Holly,
it is repairable. It sound like your hard drive went bad and needs to be replaced. The bad news: you may loose all your data, if you don't have a backup.

 

[HollyBee63]

Thanks. Guess I'm going shopping for a new hard drive. Should I take the old one out and take it with me when I go?

 

[noidea_77]

Thanks. Guess I'm going shopping for a new hard drive. Should I take the old one out and take it with me when I go?

Well, i recommend taking the computer to a repair shop, becaue a new harddrive will have no windows operating system on it and so you will get the same picture as now. Windows needs to be reinstalled on the new hdd first. Do you have a recovery cd for that? If not, a repair shop will have one and only needs the key from the sticker.

 

[HollyBee63]

I've had the system for so long I don't know if I have the disks anymore. Thanks for your help!

 

[noidea_77]

I've had the system for so long I don't know if I have the disks anymore. Thanks for your help!

The most important thing is the windows key on the microsoft sticker anyway. Something like XX12-34YY-.... It should be somewhere on the case. If it isn't, there should be at least the Dell sticker with the "service tag". If you have that, you can call Dell and ask for the key. It saves you a 100 bugs for a new windows license.