I apologize in advance if this topic is not in the right forum. I am having serious issues with my Dell Inspiron 1520 with XP 32bit Media Center Edition. I bought a Seagate 500gb/7200rpm hard drive about 6 months ago and got a message this morning saying "read failure on internal hard drive". I am pretty sure it died as I've slaved the hard drive to another computer and it's not being recognized but the motor is still going. On to my main question here.... How do I know that it's not the motherboard that has gone out? I've been having problems here lately with my quickset drivers as well as my video card drivers but I thought that problem had been resolved. I've also been infected with countless virus's and trojans as of late even though I have anti-virus programs/malware programs. I had the "google redirect" for the past month and was finally able to get it off just Saturday. My motherboard crashed about 2 years ago and was replaced under warranty. I've read that the motherboards in this particular model are crap.
I am worried about my motherboard as I put another hard drive in the computer and I just kept getting BDOSs but it was too fast for me to see an error code. This hard drive is configured for Vista 32bit and is for a different model Dell and different motherboard so I am not sure if that would make it not work.
My second question would be if I had to replace my motherboard would I have to go back with OEM equipment or could I upgrade it and how would I go about seeing what is compatible?
Any help is much appreciated as I am not so great with hardware problems!
I am worried about my motherboard as I put another hard drive in the computer and I just kept getting BDOSs but it was too fast for me to see an error code. This hard drive is configured for Vista 32bit and is for a different model Dell and different motherboard so I am not sure if that would make it not work.
My second question would be if I had to replace my motherboard would I have to go back with OEM equipment or could I upgrade it and how would I go about seeing what is compatible?
Any help is much appreciated as I am not so great with hardware problems!