Have A Dell Latitude..bout 6 Months Or Less

[Hairbent]

Laptop hasn't had any issues. One night I shut it off.. couple 3-4 nights later.. I turn it on.. can't get on the internet.. its in airplane mode.. week or so later.. I did all the things windows 10 suggested.. I restored..reset..re-searched.. etc everything I could do.. cept short of taking it to a pc place.
I did notice 3 -4 things that were odd.. made me little suspicious.. that maybe while I was at work.. the bf had been on my laptop... No actual proof.. just thr few little suspicious things I saw.. an my instinct.
So . Another 5 days or do later.. the bf was going to take some game tower to the local computer store..offered to take my laptop down there to.. I shoulda taken heed when my first thought was b haha yea right.. I don't think so,! But.. I'm an idiot.. an let him take it..
Few days later.. I get my laptop.. with him saying.. I guess ur hard drive took a dump.. an along with my laptop a Toshiba hard drive..an some sorta pretend half ass . No details 'receipt..". Course instantly I'm like u want me to believe a Toshiba came out of my Dell?.. yada yada.. but I'm not super computer literate.. maybe I jumped the gun..even tho all is suspicious at that point.. so I turn it on..an it looked all different.. not same anything .. except that IT WAS STILL STUCK IN AIRPLANE MODE.. !!!
So...needless to say.. I told him to keep the damn thing.. along with a few cuss words.. it still sits on the table.. nobody has touched it nor have either of us said a word to each other..an this was a week ago! Ha
So after all that . Sorry so long... My question is..
If I were to believe the hard drive dumped.. (which I don't) but IF...
Is that even possible? That a hard drive going bad caused it to be stuck in airplane mode? ?

[Buenchico]

A hard drive crash normally prevents anything at all working (in any meaningful way) on a computer. It's not going to simply effect one small part of its operation, in my opinion at least.

However Dell don't manufacture hard drives. Indeed, they don't manufacture any computer components at all, as far as I'm aware. They simply cobble computers together from parts bought in from various suppliers, just as your local PC technician would do if you asked him for a 'custom build' machine.

As there are only three companies in the world which make had drives (WD, Seagate and Toshiba), it's inevitable that the hard drive in a Dell machine will have come from one of those manufacturers. A quick bit of googling shows that Dell do indeed use Toshiba hard drives in their laptops.

[Buenchico]

A couple of additional thoughts:

1. If the laptop was stuck in Airplane Mode then, rather than following any suggestions from within Windows itself (or from the Microsoft website), you should have consulted Dell's website, as per my link here:
https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Technology/Question1784170.html
(It's clearly a known problem with Dell machines).

2. Assuming that you're in the UK (or in the EU), the retailer who sold you the machine was legally responsible for fixing any problem that occurred with it due to an 'inherent fault', without charge. Within the first 6 months after purchase, there's an automatic legal assumption that any problem that occurs must be due to an 'inherent fault' (which relates to something that was wrong when you bought the machine, such as a hard drive that's not up to standard).

Given that the problem seems to be well-known though, I still find it hard to believe that there was anything wrong with the hard drive. As I wrote in a previous post, far too many (so-called) computer technicians resort to reinstalling Windows (or, as in this case, replacing the hard drive) when they can't work out what's gone wrong.