I came upon a Dell Inspiron 17R N7010 about six months ago that looked brand spanking new, but when plugged in wouldn't power up at all. I imagine it was the motherboard, but I am unsure what was wrong because when I sent it to my repair guy, me and him worked out a deal and I never asked him details after getting them back. I was just hyped that it powered on and I could see it boot up for the first time! After it booted with no HDD in it I turned it off and then installed 8GB of DDR3 1066 ram and a 120GB SSHD to go with the 500GB 7200rpm hdd that I plan to put in place of the optical drive using the simple optical drive caddy. So now that I have the ram and hard drive physically installed into the notebook it was time to put in the Windows 7 64 bit disc and boot it up for the install. I started it up and immediately F2'd my way into the BIOS to check everything out. I made a few adjustments like setting it to boot from the optical drive (which is still in there until I'm done using installation discs) and I made a few other adjustments. I even went through and ran diagnostic tests on the SSHD and the memory which is something I rarely do. All was well and the laptop sat running this stuff fine for awhile and may I add that it ran the diagnostics SUPER fast when the SSHD was in it compared to when I ran the diagnostics with several other hard drives. Once I rebooted and it starts to go into setup mode or run in Windows in any way I get what some call the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH or BSOD for short. Sometimes I can make it a few minutes into the setup and other times I get the BSOD as soon as the DVD starts to do its thing. I have tried different ram, different hard drives, different chargers. I've taken the entire thing apart and everything including the motherboard functions and tests correctly. I'm assuming that means it's software. Every time I get the BSOD it's a different error so again I'm assuming that's something software. The screen says that if you've installed any new software to replace that etc. and it also says to contact Dell to get the info for what needs to be done if you've put a new motherboard in which I think my repair guy might have done. I'm not sure if he replaced it. I was told the power jack was broke when I got it and I just put a note on it when I sent it to my repair guy saying the power jack was bad. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
It sounds like all the drivers may not have loaded .. How do you have the bios configured for the Sata drives ? AHCI ?
ive had same issues with bad : dvd drive , hdd, memory. try one of those at a time and see.. try booting linux live in usb and see if machine is stable. on dells u can run diagnostics by holding Fn key and power on the laptop.
At first I had the bios set to achi and then to sata and no change. I have no clue how to load any drivers into it or flash the bios because Dell doesn't offer anything to flash the BIOS using a thumb drive or disc like other companies. I've never had an operating system on this laptop so I don't know how to flash drivers into it. During the BSOD it does saying that a missing driver or bad driver is probably what is causing the error but the driver isn't on the hard drives from another set up because the hard drives are formatted with ones and zero's only.
That's the one thing I haven't tried was taking out the DVD drive. I've tried a dozen different sticks of memory in a bunch of different configurations. The ram and hard drives I've tried on this Dell work perfectly fine on any other computer. I'm going to try to boot to Linux live in the USB to see if stable like you said. Could you give me some pointers on where I can get Linux live to do this. I've never used Linux before. Thanks
never noticed a button in the lower left corner to load the drivers. This Dell probably doesn't have any drivers at all because the mobo could be changed. No wonder why its not working. I'm going to try that and the Linux stuff tomorrow. Thanks for the help peeps!! Let you know how it goes.!
I didn't try it, DUHHHHH LOL!! I'll give it a try in a few minutes. Yeah I went into the BIOS and changed USB to #1. I'll be back and let ya know if it runs.
ive heard new i5 i7cpu type chipsets need SP1 or it gives issues... u probably had no SP (servicepack) however that BSOD of hirens and USB is probably due to usb3 chipset and some acpi/.dsdt or _OSI issue so it might not be hardware... sorta.. its newer hardware not made for win xp. i would try newest active@ boot cd (from ntfs.com) in usb or cd and see if all usb ports work fine. likely one wont as its probably usb3 and its fallback speed 2 isnt working properly.
yes none of the Windows 7 discs I am using have SP1 on them already but I just downloaded and burnt that one from above and am about to go try it out.
A PC / laptop should install w7 at BIOS /EFI defaults always. When BSOD occurs during installation, it is almost ever a hardware issue. One has to go for ONE strict method and not to mix up things to find the reason for the issue!!! First get a clean w7 ISO Install it at BIOS defaults Go to device manager and install missing drivers / WU Test hardware (USB plug and so on...) Tweak BIOS to get more performance If stuck somewhere then think about another measure, not before. If one plugs in a USB drive and BSOD appears then it is an hardware issue.....(either the drive itself or the mainboard which is faulty) lack of driver doesn't cause BSOD when pluged in...native USB driver are already in BIOS /EFI...
Yen I went to that Windows 7 SP1 page to download the DVD. I did download it and burn it to a DVD and it didn't work when I booted it. I set the bios to default like you said and then set the dvd optical drive as first to boot from like I always do. Booted the disc and it just skips over it like there is no disc in the drive. I tried the disc on a few other different laptops before I tried it on the Dell wanting to make sure it worked before trying the Dell. Well I saved both of the SP1 32 bit and 64 bit media free ISO images and am assuming I burned them incorrectly to the dvd I guess. I burned them like I always burn every other one but I really appreciate the help and will be back to let you know how it turned out. OH and also I originally didn't want to say anything about using torrent Windows 7 OS disc or other bootleg software because I was kicked out of multiple forums after mentioning it to other people on accident and didn't want the same to happen hear. Then I was directed to a page where all the Windows 7 sp1 media free links were! LOL!! I have a pretty decent activator but I always have to use a Loader program to get the genuine stamp. I was just wondering if you had any links you could guide me to where I could get Windows 7 with service pack 1 already installed on it and an activator included that will make installs genuine? Anyways I'll report back on how things go with the Dell Inspiron N7010 17R