Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

What the heck was wrong? (Boot Issue.)

Dec 25, 2014 10:26PM PST

I turn on my laptop, it boots up fine.....then 2 hours later I want to check my bank statement, and my laptop reads

Check Media [Fail]
Check Media [Fail]

No Boot device found

I have an Inspiron 15-3521, running Windows 8.

I was told it was a virus, but because I don't know a lot about computers, because I don't trust myself following youtube tutorials from people who I don't know from Adam, and because Dell's Technical Support warned me it could take up to 25 days to ship, fix and return my laptop (it was under warranty for another 3 months), I took it to the store that sold it to me. The store told me it was a virus, but I found that a little suspicious, but again I don't consider myself to be near expert enough to challenge such claims. On the contrary. $200 later and a SSD installation later, I have a working laptop.

I sort of feel like I was screwed out of more money than I needed to pay, but I am just not confident with these things and there really wasnt anyplace around to give me a 2nd opinion. All my friends who study computers said they either were not skilled in that area of computers or "I would really need to see it for myself". Who knows when they'd get around to helping.

I tried the following
Changing boot settings
Running a pre-bootassessment (the original HDD was being recognized by my comp)
Uninstalling and reinstalling the original HDD
My laptop did not come with a Windows OS disc, so I figured out that was the likely scenario, but the shop told me "you never got a disc, we sell these laptops, so we can tell you with confidence they dont come with OS discs, it is programmed in".

I just want to get to the bottom of this, I want to fix this problem myself later, to not have to pay $200 in maintenance for a laptop that only cost me $380 without tax.

Thanks all.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: boot issue
Dec 25, 2014 10:46PM PST

It's obvious that replacing the hard disk by a SSD is not the obvious way to remove a virus. So it's really unclear what the issue was and what they did and why they did it. But the message surely looks like it is caused by a hardware issue.

The whole paragraph about what you tried doesn't make much sense. Did you try this before you brought it to the shop of after it returned? And what was the outcome of these actions?

Then, it's your own choice to have it repaired for free under warranty (which would take a month), or to pay some shop $200 for fixing it in 2 days.

Kees

- Collapse -
Clarification
Dec 25, 2014 11:05PM PST

No, I tried all those steps PRIOR TO driving it in. Sorry for that confusion and thanks for making a note of it.

- Collapse -
Clarification (again)
Dec 25, 2014 11:08PM PST

The result: it didn't do anything, but like I said my limited knowledge of certain things makes me believe I could have done something wrong in following tutorials....not 100% confident trying things on my own.

- Collapse -
Answer
About OS discs.
Dec 25, 2014 10:54PM PST

We create those later. Dell has documentation on that PLUS we can perform full system backups for restoring later. I know, I know, folk loathe to do this.
Bob

- Collapse -
About the issue. The SSD I see now is 7mm tall
Dec 25, 2014 11:22PM PST

And some folk forget the 2mm spacer which I don't think much about if lost as I can make such in about a minute with so many materials that I don't think about it much (yes I wrote that twice.)

OK so I'd re-check my work on the SSD mounting area and see if the SSD is 7mm high and if I forgot my spacer.

That is, I found a few that came unplugged and boot failure ahoy!
Bob