Hi guys,

Lately my Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop has been seizing up at random times and making this funny sound like it's trying really hard to boot something or other.

Then after a while it gives me that awful blue screen with the top stating a kernel_inpage_error. I can't remember which inpage error it stated and I forgot to write down that parameters. But after I restart I get two errors saying that the primary hard drive is not detected and the Fixed optical drive is not detected and that there are no bootable devices then to hit f1 to retry boot or f2 to go to setup utility.

When I enter the BIOS it says that the Optical drive is not installed and that there is no primary hard drive. I have no other drive except c:

Before I managed to restart after a couple tries but now it's not doing that. I don't think it's a virus because my laptop doesn't have internet and it is never used for games and all files are scanned on my main computer before it is copied onto the laptop. Basically it's all my work files.

The last time I managed to restart, I did the chkdsk /f and nothing came up wrong. It worked for a little while and now it's doing it again.

Please help me, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

Sounds like either your bios is playing up or your harddrive is on the blink.

sounds like the usual dell products playing up, i would first attempt to update the bios, then i would try to make all the connections of the drives tight, ie open the case and pushh all the connectors into place.
one problem i have noticed especially with faster spinning drives is that the cables seem to loosen after a while, vibrations maybe, and with laptops jarring can cause all kinds of loose connections to get loose enough to be a problem.
also why not try 'mandrake move" simple easy and generally you boot direct from the cdrom, so you can work without the drives

i hate computers!
but cant help myself....

I would be checking your warranty information. Sounds like the ide contrller is going out. I have never seen a laptop get "loose cables" since for the most part they don't use them.

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Go to the support forum at www.dell.com and see if this is a known issue. Is your warranty still valid, because this doesn't sound good.

You can avoid many of these Windows problems with Linux. Linspire eases the transition for new users