I have a dell inspiron 1525, the hard drive was replaced due to the dell diagnostics telling us it was bad, bought a new western digital 500gb hard drive put it in, installed windows (vista basic) all was good for about 2-3 hrs when the laptop started locking up and upon restart would go to a black screen asking us to start windows normal or safe mode, when I pick safe or normal it ends up coming right back up to that black screen (an endless loop) till i pull out the restore disc and reinstall (tried repair didn't fix it, had to reload windows again).

We went thru this process 3 times (loading windows, drivers etc) then realizing within a few hours of use we would end up with a locked up system again that goes to the black screen and wont get back to windows, so on the last time we loaded windows up and that went fine as usual but before loading stuff onto it I ran the dell diagnostics, it reported the hard drive error code of 2000-0146 which I have read around online about meaning bad/replace drive in other posts and dells forums.

Ok it's possible the new replacement drive is or went bad, but this is where and how I am confused as to what the problem is.

I put that new drive onto a usb device and hooked it upto my main pc, loaded up the western digital lifeguard testing tool and did an extended test on the drive, it came back as PASS (found no errors), which stumped me, so I re-seated the drive in the laptop re ran the dell diganostic tests again and sure enough the dell tests tell me the drive is bad same codes etc.

The dell diagnostics gave me two different codes, one being 2000-0146 and another one 0F00:0244 when i tested only the disc (actually many of the second code one after another were reporting read test fail block XXXXXX cant read replace disk).

Since I got windows loaded on the laptop with that drive in it, i figured i would try the western digital test on the laptop with the drive in it, yet when i load that program there is a part where it tells you to click the drive you want to test, well there is no listing of a drive (even tho windows is loaded and the computer works!), very odd...

Has anyone ever run across something like this, yes i could have a bad hard drive but i would have guessed it would have tested bad on the main pc, the dell diagnostics shows everything else on the laptop as a PASS btw, just shows dst short test hard drive FAIL with that 2000-0146 code.

Called dell but they just want me to pay $300+ for extended support since I am out of warranty, i know the drive is still under warranty (3 yr from wd) so I will send it in for a swap out but I have a weird feeling it might not be the drive, but am not sure what else to check or do here...

Just like to get this working again so any input or suggestions are appreciated.

The unit is clean inside (no big dust bunnies) i do use a surge protector and a laptop cooler (not laying on the bed overheating), my dell restore/vista disc is scratch free, and windows does load fine, it just takes a bit of basic use (loading simple stuff like office, google earth, etc nothing funky etc) before it ends up just taking a dive and going into that reboot to black screen each time.

I have same problem. Dell Inspiron 1525. Reloaded Vista that worked for a week then back to error messages; hard drive etc. same code on diagnostics check - 2000-0146.
checked on net and found someone who says it is caused by a Dell programme shipped with pc and is hidden in a partition on the hard drive.
Not sure how true this is but it certainly is not a hardware fault as your experience shows.
I will try formatting the entire hard drive and all partitions and reloading again. Need to find the page I mentioned because it gives advice on how to remove it.
Good luck

Dell PC most of time comes with its own system reserve partition.
Replacing the HDD or use any 3rd party software like the Partition Magic application will delete that partition and causing many problems.

Check this partition first, the next is check the laptop onboard HDD controller.

Hope this helps!
Bill
Tech Manager

Hi,

There are many reasons for Dell Inspiron 1525 not starting up. These issues include the overheating of the processor and an unresponsive hard disk. Another reason is corrupted operating system files. Apart from these issues, you could also face startup problem due to a power failure in the middle of BIOS update or any other form of update in the system. Sometimes the laptop just stops working, it will not start up or boot up.

Hello, i have experienced the same problem as stated above bye ftlosm with the exceptions that 1. my error code for the pre-boot assessment build error code was 2000-014 and 2. the errors in the read havent come up yet, i am currently running that read test as depicted but without the read errors thus far @75% .. test has been running over 24 hours n still bye my calculation has another 8hours and 15 minutes to go..i did however have another code or error prior to the read test beginning that was again similar to ftlosm's, mine being "error code: 0F00:075B, Msg: Disk_0-Self-test Electrical Error" tho.. the machine is a desktop dell inspiron, is their anyone who can offer advice; bigs did you find that page you were refering to yet?, pctech33 do you know of an option to fix the power failure in the bios? or fix the overheated processor so that the computer starts back up without the black screen and normally (as i am not That technically inclined to know how to do so)

What I did that did fix the machine and it's still working today was to reload windows (fresh install for like the 8th time) but instead of using the dell drivers disc (which was scratch free btw) I went on another machine downloaded all the drivers and dell software for the machine using the most current versions, put onto a thumbdrive went back to the laptop installed them in the order instructed by dell and altho it worked I figured it would again produce the error codes, but (knock on wood) so far to this day feb 1st 2012, so far its still working like a champ!

I can't explain why using the drivers/software from dell vs the drivers/software given on the disc made a difference, i don't even know why I did it that way it was just out of desperation, but it worked, I had pulled that hard drive out and tested it repeatedly knowing it was passing fine long short extended tests, maybe there was just something weird in the dell drivers that made it read weird and the more current udpates vs using the originals fixed it or maybe the 8th time was just what it took to make it work (but the only difference was i used the dell.com drivers vs the driver disc for the machine) but my daughter is using it now daily and I used it for a long time before recently upgrading to a xps 17 incher which i love btw...

Bill

I believe but can't prove that maybe the dell diagnostic utility on my disc or the bios update vs what they had on the website might have been the culprit, causing issues off my disc but yet somehow different in the version downloaded from dell.com all I knew was after doing it that way the thing worked so I didn't really question it and said Thank you Lord!!!!!!!

Thank you very much for responding.. and in such quick form, i appreciate that. What exactly did you download?(alll of the drivers?) and how do i know what order to install them?.... I checked dell with my service tag and it says i have only 10 drivers.. is this sufficient or should i click on the other tab which it says similar machines or so forth n search throught those for more?, to get more drivers than just those 10? I will try once i can locate the disks to do this method; its been sooo long and dont know where/what i did with them, but again; Thank You very much for your speedy and direct response i will reply back and let you know once i've found the disks and recoverd the system; appreciate it

I just went to dell.com and entered my model under drivers (for me dell inspiron 1525) then chose my os (xp) and it listed my drivers

Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

This page explains a bit more about drivers and about midway down it gives you the proper order to install them (basically by importance)
Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

(Correct order list)
http://support.dell.com/support/topi...&isLegacy=true

I don't know why my computer was giving me that error about the drive, I only tried the drivers from dell on a whim but it worked, I am thinking the bios or the dell system utilities might have been different (updated) vs my drivers and utilities disc dell gave me, heck I dunno but I repeated the xp and dell drivers installs over and over and kept getting that error until the one time i tried it by using the dell.com newest drivers listed method...

Bill

Thank you very much,
and thank you again, i shall try once my disks have been located, or either that i'll probably have to buy or download a new one? And thank you again for being so thorough