dell 8000 inspiron laptop

[gazzagazza]

Im trying to help a friend get this laptop working they bought from auction.
Pc check hangs when at detecting hardware stage.
I can boot dos disk,do fdisk but I just cannot get a windows operating system to load. I boot the win98 startup floppy with cdrom support.
I then type setup.It starts to initialise then locks machine saying:-
please wait while setup initialises.
> Scanning system registry...
> Windows setup requires 7340032 bytes.
After which the laptop remains frozen.I have tried win98 & 98se to no avail.
The laptop has a 30gb IBM djsa 232 drive.Fdisk sees the 30gb.
The laptop seems to have this ez bios thing installed.I dont know why this is .I think I understand basically what ez bios is supposed to do(i.e seeing bios seeing drives above 8gb capacity) but the bios sees the drive as 30gb anyway.(unless its ezbios making it say that.And anyway I thought ez bios only worked with certain manufaturers drives not IBM,unless they are badged?)
Have dell rigged the machines so that you cannot install operating systems of your own?Do I need a special dell disk that comes with a new system (I've a vague recollection that this may be so)If true,we dont have it.Does this mean that this rather nice looking laptop is now so much scrap?
Thanks for any help on these matters.
regds Gazza (newbie)

[rpertusio]

I have this same model laptop (Inspiron 8000) and can tell you for sure that there is no limitation by Dell as far as installing what you want on it.

What may help you is to make a set of Diagnostic floppy disks from Dell, and boot from them (and run the diagnostics!)

If you can't find any problems that way, I would head over to the Dell website and grab the latest BIOS for the I-8000. I have no "EZbios" anywhere on the laptop, and it works just fine. (It may be the EZbios stuff messin up the setup.)

Hopefully that's a start.

- rp

[gazzagazza]

Thanks for reply rpertusio.I will try your suggestions.

[gazzagazza]

downloaded diags.All passed ok . Fashed bios with latest version.
Made no difference to prob. Tried to get rid of EZbios,used a WDclear.exe utility to low level format drive. EZbios seems to have gone,but still cannot install an operating system.Why does this dell laptop not like Win 98 cd .(The cd and startup disks are not corrupt) Is EZbios still lingering somewhere?

[gazzagazza]

Well ,Dell wont speak to me when I phoned because i dont know what the name of the company was that originally bought the laptop. I suppose the autioneers may know.
However ,I managed to borrow a dell cd of win xp. It booted off cd & installed perfectly.
So I guess Dell must do something to stop any old copy of windows loading.I guess I'll never know.
Beats me...................

[tech56]

hd.may be frezzing .
try taken out hd,reset jumper

[Clueless_Again]

I also have a Dell Inspiron 8000 that I am trying to work on. I ran the Dell Diagnostics and it looks like the harddrive might be bad. It's got an IBM DJSA-232 32 GB harddrive in it and I have not been successful on finding diagnostics from IBM for the harddrive. Does anyone have any clues at to where I can find them? Thanks in advance.

[rpertusio]

Hitachi now holds the drive utilities that you seek. You will want the "Drive Fitness Test":
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm


- rp