rydin4life

My neighbor brought me his Dell Laptop running XP. Its quite a few years old, but previously working fine. It will not boot up, so I booted into diagnostics and get the following message "DST Short Status Test" Fail. Error Code 1000-04145 Unit 4: Timeout. I'm assuming this means the hd is no good from what I've read online, but thought I'd ask here as well.

lawson_jl

That means the file system is corrupt and there may be bad sectors on the hard drive.

Try this:
1. Boot the computer with the Windows disc.
2. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen > press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. When prompted type "1". (if you have a multi-boot computer, select the installation you want to repair.)
4. When prompted > enter the Administrator password. If there is no password, just press ENTER.
5. Now you should be in the recovery console.
6. Type chkdsk c: /p /r > press <Enter>.
7. When the disk check is done: Type Exit > press <Enter>.
8. Take the Windows disc out and reboot.

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rydin4life

Thanks for the help, but he doesn't have a windows disk for the laptop..