Laptop bricked?

[Darklink42]

Here's what I've got so far:

-The only thing I can get it to do upon turning on, other than going to setup, is to display a message after about seven seconds saying a disc read error occured, ctrl+alt+del to restart. This of course, only takes it back to that message again.

-It is a Dell Inspiron 1000 (inherited from my grandma, so it's not top of the line by any means.) Runs on Windows XP, has an Intel (probably celeron)

-I don't know a lot about laptops, and only know enough to generally troubleshoot. All that I know right now is that there is a slight possibility it got fried either from my girlfriend spilling soda near it (I didn't see any soda actually touch it, but I also didn't clean up the mess either. It was also charging all night and in standby mode so the thought has occurred to me that the power might have surged or something.

Any help or advice would be awesome, if you need more details just ask. Thanks in advance guys.

[m68030]

Harddrive is probably dead.

You might try downloading something like Ubuntu or Knoppix or PuppyLinux and see if you can boot it off a CD or USB Drive.

If it's a stock system it should have only 256 megs of ram installed.

It appears it can support up to 1Gb of PC2100 in the form of 2x512:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145482

You will likely need to replace the harddrive, this would be a good candidate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148128

In the end you're looking at sinking around $100 into it to make it usable.

You'll still only have a celeron proccessor, and there's no telling what

shape the battery is in.

Good luck.

[prophetik music]

hdd is probably dead. take the hard drive out, stick it in an external 2.5" case, and try to get your files onto another computer.

it's not a very good laptop, for what it's worth, so it's probably better to just replace it.

edit: 2.5" with a 3.5" external box...doesn't work =)

[starla]

They make 2.5" ones for laptops, or you will also need an adapter from 44 pin laptop to 40 plus power to make it work with a 3.5" enclosure. That equipment will run about $50.

I agree with cotmm's initial sentiment: a new hard drive will be around a hundred bucks, and you'll still have an old laptop. You may be able to find something cheap on craigslist as a replacement.

[prophetik music]

whoops, mistype. good catch, starla, i'll edit my initial post.

[Darklink42]

Well that's better news than having to get a brand new one. I'll give it a try and see what happens. Update you when that happens. Thanks for all the help so far guys.

[Darklink42]

So, small update. Had a guy look at it, he told me that the sheer age of the hard drive is probably what killed it. The magnet in the hard drive came loose, which is apparent by the fact that the hard drive rattles when you move it. I checked out that link to the newegg product, but just to make sure I wanted to know if it would be compatible. Here's the info on the hard drive:

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.ef1eac5265e3375befca8644eac4f0a0/

I found that by typing in the model number on disk, so it should be the right one.

[prophetik music]

here's some possible replacements.