A regular client brought me an XPS M1530 laptop with symptoms of hard
drive failure. The system is under Dell's Complete Care warranty, so it
is entitled to a hard drive replacement.

People with warranties on computers contact me regularly because they do
not want to spend the hour I spent today to get them to send me a
replacement hard drive, but DO NOT schedule a Dell service tech please!

Rahul was misinformed that pressing Fn together with the Power On button
activates firmware diagnostics. I don't think so. They appear to be
the same ones from the diagnostic partition. He was also unable to
answer the question of what to do if the diagnostic partition is hosed.
He thought that there were firmware diagnostics. I did not know about
the Fn-Powerswitch key combination. Is this something found only in
newer Dell laptops, and if so, beginning when.

I also ran Western Digital's hard drive diagnostic, which told me that
117 sectors had been repaired, and it did not even attempt to run any
more tests. Perhaps the system took a hit or a bump or a jolt after two
years?

I wonder where Rahul and Mohammed are? Pakistan? Afghanistan?

An interesting hour, to say the least... Ben Myers