D250 doesn't boot up

I can get into the bios and change settings and I get POST messages on power on, but after that - nothing but a dim cursor in the upper left corner of the screen.
I sent off for the recovery disks but no joy, it won't boot from the ext HDD. It turns for a bit but after that nothing happens.
I downloaded the updated bios but nothing happens when I try to flash it, power light never flashes. But if I try to boot with Fn and Esc pressed it will tell me "disk error".
It won't boot from a USB either.
I don't get a long beep on startup which would indicate bad memory.
90% of anything is having seen it before, any ideas?
-Rich

 

Sounds like you hard drive is toast. Can you see it in the BIOS?

 

Not in the POST. It says "check cable"

I finally got it to boot from the CD. Funny thing is, I can run through the entire reload from the restoration disks and it looks like it installs properly but when it restarts there's nothing there.

It's there in the bios.

 

+1 to the hard drive being dead. Just because the BIOS can see it doesn't mean that it's fully functional. Replace the hard drive and you should be fine. P.S The D250 wont give a beep signal for bad RAM, it simply won't get as far as a POST screen if the RAM is that bad.

If you really don't want to replace the hard drive, get yourself the latest Ubuntu Linux live CD image, burn it to disk and boot the live distro. From there you should be able to tell if the hard drive is funcional at all.