I am not sure if this is the right forum or if I should post in hardware. if so, mods... feel free to move thread to correct forum.

anyway, I am checking on my niece's laptop , which is a Dell Inspiron 5150. she says that a year or so ago, XP wouldn't boot, she spent 4 hours on phone with Dell TECH SERVICE and they had her do a fresh install of XP (she lost everything on hard drive.) and they couldn't figure out the problem.
i turned on the computer, and this is what happens...
Dell logo comes on and white bar goes normally from left to right.
Then... black screen for maybe 45-60 seconds.
Then...the white XP progress bar at the bottom of the screen appears and it TAKES about 10 minutes or so to go from left to right... then XP boots up fine and it appears to be working normally. Since she lost everything, she's basically got XP LOADED up and not really any other apps.

could this ACTUALLY be a hard disk failing issue? or bad RAM? i am not very familiar with laptops, but it seems like the fan is maybe working extra hard and the laptop does seem pretty warm. I just don't know how to check these things.

thanks in advance.btw - XP Home Edition
Pentium 4 - 3.06 GHZ
256 MB RAM (not a llot, in my opinion)
Diagnose hard drive and RAM.

Search google for:

Microsoft Memory Diagnostics
hardrive manufacturer + diagnostic software40 bucks @ crucial.com: http://crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Inspiron%205150Crucial...not quality ? ?
I wonder why their warranty is Lifetime then....
try a defrag they ushaly hep me when my pc slow as a turtleQuote from: tylerisdabest on December 25, 2008, 11:05:58 PM

try a defrag they ushaly hep me when my pc slow as a turtle