HDD SOFT error

[djmaddogfreak]

Customer has a DELL XPS M140 Laptop, when booting from HDD, windows setup pops up and says "system is restarting" like it just finished installing a major service pack or something. The system starts to boot slowly, then restarts. Trying to boot again, it told me that "Internal HDD SOFT error" had occurred. Any ideas as to what that is?

BTW, trying to run CHKDSK from restore disk, first attempt no good, when it asked me to pick the version of windows to repair, i had two options.

1.C:\Windows
2.C:\Windows7

Tried selecting the first one, and froze.

 

[shdwsclan]

The hard drive is probably dead....well not dead as a doornail but dying.
Either its peppered with damaged sectors and drive is endlessly retrying or diagnostic and maintenance subtracts have been damaged.

Either way, he needs a new drive....

 

[djmaddogfreak]

Fair enough, thats what I figured, just wanted a second opinion.

I did get chkdsk to run, but it's very very slow, i turned on the extended test to check for bad sectors and attempt to repair, but I doubt that will do anything more but buy maybe a few days more time.

Thanks.