How to: Run Dell Diagnostics on a C6XX and D6XX Laptop.
This post will assist determining whether a hard drive hardware failure exits when troubleshooting laptops. This is not a definitive indication of a good hard drive, but if an error is indicated as described below, the hard drive is definitely defective.
Tips n Tricks to run Dell diagnostics as follows:
1. Turn on the laptop.
2. At the Dell splash screen, depress when prompted in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The system displays “Preparing one-time boot menu”.
3. At the next screen, arrow down to “Diagnostics” and press .
4. Pre-boot System Assessment starts and typically completes in less than 5 minutes. One user input is required (enter “Y” to indicate video tests passed).
5. Hard drive failures are characterized by “DST Short Status Test” failures. Note the error code.
6. If the system assessment completes without errors, a message will typically be displayed that “no diagnostic utility partition found”. Either enter “C” to cancel and then any key to reboot or simply turn off the system
