I ask, because where I work is a "Dell house" and we've had lots of BIOS issues with the last model or 2 of PCs doing EXACTLY what you're experiencing. Our fix has been to download the most recent BIOS update on another PC, burn to CD/DVD, and on the PC having issues install the BIOS update via command line in the Recovery dialog. It's worked like a charm every time.
Alright, thanks I will mention it to the guy fixing my comp. We were going to install a new HD today, but my comp is only 2 yrs old so maybe it has the same problem as yours. So it's good I saw this before we went to buy it. Maybe he'll know what you are talking about because Idek what you mean.
I have no idea, but they made cool beeping noises every now and then. EDIT: ok I asked, there were no tests run. What was done was he "ran data recovery then reformted to remove the bad sectors".
So.... He basically installed Windows on top of Windows. Works, but not great. An in place upgrade does basically the same thing, but the system needs to be functional to do so. My guess is there was some kind of a hiccup. I doubt the drive is dead. Once you recover everything you need, I'd recommend using a program that WIPES the drive. Dban nuke, wipe drive, killdisk, etc. Because it removes ALL data, all partition tables, all fragments. It rewrites the drive to being basically empty with a bunch of 0's and 1's. It's like having a brand new hard drive. Once that's done, then you can reinstall everything. Before it crashed.... I hope you made the restore/recovery disk set from the recovery partition, like they tell you to when you open the box. If you didn't, you're kinda screwed. It has all the bloatware (some people do use it), the drivers for hardware, and Windows itself. So, if you have the disk set, wipe the drive and reinstall to the original factory settings. It sucks but it works. Also, if you wipe the drive and it comes across unreadable sectors, then you know for sure the drive is bad. When a wiping utility can't access the drive, it is a bad sign.
