Not booting up.

A friend brought his computer over because it wasn't booting up.

It would come up with a message "Stop 0x0000007B (0xFE49640,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000"

The first part of the message could be indicating a boot sector virus.

Now I can no longer get that message but "Warning: Dell's desk monitoring system has detected that Drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specifications. It is advisable to immediately back of your data and replace your harddisk drive by calling your support desk or Dell Computer Corp."

I have tried fdisk but it won't see D: drive which would normally be C:

I am also getting clicks from the hard drive.

The computer is a Dell dimension 4300.

Is the hard drive toast?

Any ideas?

Just re-booted and got the original "Stop...." message again.

Check this out, not definetly this but something to check

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=122926

What is telling you about a D: drive? or is that an optical drive?

Which OS and which File System ?? - (and bearing in mind that Dell often/usually have a hidden utility partition in addition to the one for the OS).

Grab the HDD's actual manufacturer's diagnostics from their website (list in the sticky at the top of this storage forum) and check the HDD from the floppy diskette it will make for you.

Using fdisk drive C: is normally virtual so drive D: is temporally C:

Will ck out the other info.

Any "Boot virus" software I can run from a floppy or CD?

Dell sending new HD. The old one is toast. Thanks for the posts