Dell XPS 15Z Crash

[Shadius]

Hello everyone,

I have a Dell XPS 15Z with Winodws 7 Home Premium installed. However, it seems to have crashed after a blue screen and now when I turn it on it just gives me a black screen with a blinking underscore. I've tried to enter Safe Mode by tapping on F8, but it doesn't work. It used to start up fine before. The problem started when I installed some Windows Updates. Now I don't know what to do. I used Ubuntu's LiveCD to run the Disk Utility and check the hard disk drive and it told me that the drive was bad. I suspect that the hard disk drive has crashed. How can I be sure though? Please help me in solving this! Much thanks in advance!

[mips]

Post the output of smartctl or gsmartcontrol here. If they are not on the livecd you can install them, the first is a cli util and the second gui.

[Shadius]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ smartctl
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [i686-linux-3.8.0-19-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

ERROR: smartctl requires a device name as the final command-line argument.


Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[mips]

I was hoping you would use some initiative on how to use the command.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T.

[Shadius]

I was trying to do that, but I don't exactly know which option to use. I actually tried a bunch of options from reading the manual, but I don't know what to look for. I greatly appreciate your help with this.

[Shadius]

Bump

[mips]

Short test,

sudo smartctl --test=short /dev/sdX

Long test,

sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sdX

Results of test(s),

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX

Where X is your particular drive letter.

Remember to wait during the tests, it will tell you more or less when it will be finished.