How do I know if I have a dead harddrive?

[Undacovabrotha10]

Will I still be able to turn the computer on? I am trying to do some trouble shooting for my friends Dell Insprion 5100 (about 4 years old). Recently it decided that it would not turn on any more, when I hit the power button as far as I can tell absolutely nothing happens at all. I have tried with the battery in and AC power, nothing, with the battery out and AC, nothing, and with just battery, and got nothing.

I have been told that it may be the mother board and if thats the case it's completely gone right? Does anyone else have any ideas on what it could be, id rather not tell my friend to spend $60.00 to get it looked at and it turns out its dead.

Thanks

[John Ratsey]

Even if the HDD is dead you should get a BIOS screen and be able to boot from a CD.

John

[adinu]

It's the motherboard. A dead hard drive means the computer will boot, but upon not finding the HD it will say OS not found, or no HD found.

But if the computer does nothing at all when the power button is pressed, then it's a power issue, which most likely means it's the motherboard. It could be a bad AC adapter, or bad connector on the motherboard not making good connection with the AC, but that is unlikely unless the system suffered some physical shock. And even so, to fix it might require an entire new mobo anyway.

[Undacovabrotha10]

It's the motherboard. A dead hard drive means the computer will boot, but upon not finding the HD it will say OS not found, or no HD found.

But if the computer does nothing at all when the power button is pressed, then it's a power issue, which most likely means it's the motherboard. It could be a bad AC adapter, or bad connector on the motherboard not making good connection with the AC, but that is unlikely unless the system suffered some physical shock. And even so, to fix it might require an entire new mobo anyway.

Yea...I think we are better off buying a new laptop.