I use dell laptop, when I turn it on, it gives me an acoustic signal and a error message No. 0200 it says " Faliure in Fixed Disk ", what's the cause, and could it be solved ?

Actually, I restart my laptop for several times and it starts normally. But, when I use it later the problem of that message starts again.

I sounds like your harddrive is dying. I suggest you immediately backup all your person files. Is the laptop still under warranty?

Your hard drive may have a poor connection e.g caused by it being dropped or other physical "jolts".
Remove the main battery and the AC adapter.
Check your hard drive and make sure it's connections to the laptop are okay - if in doubt, remove it, install it again.
Install the main battery and try the laptop.

If that doesn't help........
Check your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics.
See the latter part of response 1 in this:
http://www.computing.net/windows95/...

If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to.

Did you Google?

http://www.google.com/search?q=Fail...

I'm guessing the laptop is still under Warranty. To preventing voiding that warranty, DON'T open the computer until you contact Dell.

Life's more painless for the brainless.

I used the diagonastics on my hard drive, it tells me that every thing is okay, and the computer boots Windows normally but, when I turn it of and using it after a long while like 5 hours or a day it gives me that warning again, and I noticed when I open the boot menu and choose the HD boot it works normally so, what's the problem ?

Which diagnostics? It must pass the hd manufacturer's long test - it may pass the short test or a Dell test but fail the long hd manufacturer's test.

If that's what it passed,
"....when I turn it of and using it after a long while like 5 hours or a day it gives me that warning again,...."

you can get false error messages when it's actually something else that is is wrong.

Have you checked to see whether you have an overheating problem in your bios Setup by looking at the current temps when you have the problem?

You could also....
See response 2 in this - try cleaning the contacts on the ram modules, and making sure the modules are properly seated:
http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...

For a laptop, you must remove both its main battery and AC adapter before you do that.

Connection problems can occur when a unit is cool/cold, and the problems can disappear when the unit warms up. This is because materials shrink when cooled and expand when warmed.

Look in cmos/bios setup and see if you have a 'hard disk pre delay' option. If so, set it for about 6 seconds. That will give the drive more time to spin up and be recognized.

The diagnostics you've tried may not be able to catch the problem. It occurs when power is first applied to the drive. Once you get past that initial state--by numerous restarts--the drive works normally. And that's when you run the diagnostics. So they report that the drive is fine.

If the pre delay doesn't help, as already suggested, you should check the warranty and send it off for a new one if it's covered.

Actually, I don't have a pre-delay option, but, I think that the hard drive tries to spin but, it stucks, I just noticed that from the sound, after a time it stops spinning and the message shows up, when I restart It works without making that strange sound. the only way to give that hard drive more time to work but, there is no option for delay !!

You need to run the diagnostics from the harddrive manufacturer as was stated above. You may be able to determine the brand from the startup screens or download SIW.exe.

It does sound like a fault with the drive. The warranty should still cover it even if the diagnostics don't show a problem. You should check to make sure it hasn't expired. Go to the manufacturer's site and browse to 'warranty' or 'rma'. You'll need to enter some info from the drive label. If it's covered and you want to return it you usually have to check the appropriate box on their web page. They'll give you a certain amount of time to return it.

They'll want to know what the problem is with the drive. You don't have to go into much detail as they can't expect you to be an expert. Just say you're getting fixed disk failure messages.

The warranty is still covering the laptop and all its parts, I will send it to see what's really the problem, and I think I have to make a back up too. Okay thank you.

Before you send it away.....

- if you haven't already tried it, do this:

See response 2 in this - try cleaning the contacts on the ram modules, and making sure the modules are properly seated:
http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...

For a laptop, you must remove both its main battery and AC adapter before you do that.

- it will take a long time to get your computer back if you have to send it to some place distant. Check to see if it can be at least looked at, or better still repaired, locally by some place certified to repair Dells.

- because they always try to spend the least time possible it takes to fix your drive or other problems on warranty, they will not back up any of your personal data on the hard drive and restore it, unless you arrange to pay an extra fee for them to do that - otherwise they will merely wipe the drive if it's okay and re-install the original software, or they will replace the drive and install the original software on it.

My hard drive is Western Digital, and I applied the long test and also I get nothing just saying "Fine", I still can't understand what's wrong. And, I also checked the temprature of the system its Okay, But, the one thing I didn't check is the RAM Modules you are talking about, I just didn't deal with laptop hardware before so, is it risk to check the RAM myself ?

By the way, My laptop model is Dell Inspiron 1501

"My hard drive is Western Digital, and I applied the long test and also I get nothing just saying "Fine" "

In that case your hard drive is okay but the data on it may not be.
Did it mention there were problems with the data on the drive?
If it didn't, there are no serious data problems on the drive.
If it did.....
Your hard drive must boot every time in order for you to be able to try fixing the datqa on the drive.
If you can get it to reliably boot but can't figure out the data problems, you can get the Rescue or Recovery or similar CD set from the manufactuer for your model and re-load all the original software yourself - it often costs a lot less than even a OEM XP Home CD.

"...one thing I didn't check is the RAM Modules you are talking about, I just didn't deal with laptop hardware before so, is it risk to check the RAM myself ?"

No, as long as you don't do anything dumb.
E.g. See the last part of response 5 - you must remove the main battery and the AC adapter when you do that.

Also check your hard drive's connection as in response 2 if you haven't already tried that.

If you do a ram test, do that AFTER having tried cleaning the contacts and making sure the ram is seated properly - otherwise any errors found may be FALSE.

If the ram is incompatible with the chipset, it will likely FAIL a ram test - that is NOT a true indication of the ram being faulty - there is probably nothing wrong with it, and it will pass the test if installed in a mboard it is compatible with.
.....

Ram that works in another mboard , or any ram you buy or have lying around, may not work properly, or sometimes, not at all - even if it physically fits and is the right overall type (e.g. DDR, DDR2, etc.; PCxxxx, xxx mhz) for your mboard. In the worst cases of incompatibilty your mboard WILL NOT BOOT with it installed, and the mboard may not even beep - the ram has to be compatible with the mboard and it's chipset.

See response 5 in this for some info about ram compatibilty, and some places where you can find out what will work in your mboard for sure:
http://www.computing.net/hardware/w...
Correction to that:
Mushkin www.mushkin.com

The error message 'ERROR 0200: Failure Fixed Disk' indicates a problem with the hard drive. Or at least the bios thinks that's where the problem is. But I did come across this:

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/...

Where the message appears to have been caused by another IDE device likely interfering with the drive (posts 21 and 22).

I don't see how the RAM, even if it is bad, is going to prevent the bios from seeing and setting up the hard drive or how bad RAM could cause the hard drive to spin sporadically (#8 above).

Given it has a problem spinning up I can't see how the problem isn't with the hard drive. And that's precisely why the diagnostics aren't detecting a problem. When the drive doesn't spin up you can't run the diagnostics. When it does spin up it's working fine and the diagnostics detect no problem.

If the problem was with bearings the diagnostics should have picked up on it. I tend to agree with DAVEINCAPS that the drive is OK only when you can get the diagnostics to run. At any rate this is not your problem. Backup your personal files and get a warranty repair. Insist they replace something. Could be the IDE controller which is integrated on the MBoard.

It's Ok, Actually I'm writting this message using the laptop which has the problem, and as you see, I'm working normally just after passing that failure message.

By The Way, The only thing that I'm sure about now, is that the hard drive has the problem of start spinning. So I will replace it under the current warranty. Thank you all for this great effort in answering me.

You're welcome. Let us know how it's working when you get it back.

Yeah, I got it back, it's workin' again with no troubles. Thanx again for answering me.

That's good.
Thanks for the update.