My friend was selling her Dell Inspiron 3670(?) to another friend. She was going to clean it up first. She booted it up about a month or so ago, but when she tried to boot it up this week, all she had was the Dell logo and spinning circle. She brought it to me to see if I could figure out what's wrong. I ran some diagnostic tests included one that had harddrive. It appeared to "pass" that test. So I decided to open it up to see if I saw anything wrong. I'm pretty sure this pc came with a 250GB SSD drive. I do not see anything! I think it's supposed to be to the left of the fan. There is an indentation there, but no ssd drive. I'm attaching a picture to see if it could be hidden?? My friend said she did not open it, and the only people that could have were painters at her house. Please let me know if I'm just missing it. Thanks!pat pc.jpg
Besides the DVD drive at the top I don't see an obvious HDD/SSD. The specs from the factory say it could have an M.2 SSD which looks like the pic below. It would be plugged in just below the CPU. There's something there but because of the low light and low resolution I can't tell if there is one there or not.
More pics of the inside of the computer and it's slots are here:
I think I see the location in this picture! It looks like it is below the optical drive? If so, that leads me to the next question: Why is it stuck spinning at the Dell logo? I was able to get to a page that had 4 options on it with one being the hardware diagnostics. I made it to a couple of other tests, but I'll have to go back and do them again and tell you where I got "stuck". Thanks for the responses!
I do not see either a 2.5 inch hard drive or an SSD in the supplied photos, so that computer will not be starting any operating system. You should still be able to access the BIOS/UEFI however. You should also be able to boot from a CD/DVD or USB flash drive.
Another question: Can I take a working harddrive with Windows installed out of a second computer and put it in this computer? And if so, do I need to change anything in the bios?
No. You would need to install an operating system from scratch. Once you've placed a hard drive into the computer then booting with the install media ready should automatically detect it and allow the process to begin.
Also worth mentioning is if her drive was stolen then it would be a good idea if she changed passwords to important things like banking, shopping, email and other critical websites.
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I did tell her to change passwords, but she said she rarely used this pc, and never for banking or purchases. She always uses her phone or ipad for that.
I found the SSD Drive! It's there! I found it odd that the diagnostics said it was there and fine so I kept looking. It's in the attached picture circled in red. I have never seen one this small. So...back to original problem: After I turn it on, it is stuck at the Dell logo with a spinning circle. I have run various diagnostics and have found no problems. I even tried resetting by removing the battery. The only other thing is to maybe pull the ssd drive? Any other ideas?Capture.JPG
After finding that it did indeed have a very small SSD drive, I kept at it until I was able to reset the computer. After that, it appears to be working fine. Not sure what happened, but I hope it is totally resolved. Thanks for the responses!
Thanks for the update. With any luck you should now have it booting into Windows correctly. If is still scheduled to be sold, you may still want to use some security erase software, like Eraser, to securely erase any remaining personal files or documents, as well as the free space on the drive.
[RESOLVED] Missing SSD drive??
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