dell not booting, has me baffled

weeder

ive got this dell dimension 2400 to fix for the neighbours but its showing some very strange behaviour booting

basically everytime you try and boot normally you getPreff F1 to retry boot Press F2 to enter setup and then it keeps looping everytime you press F1

now if booting from an xp cd and you dont press any key to boot from cd(if you know what i mean) windows loads without a problem so i reinstalled windows.

now im beginning to assume its a hardware problem so i press F12 and select boot to utility partition and low and behold windows loads up again. so i formatted all the partitions and made a new one and its still the very same

so ive tried a good few drive configurations and a couple of partitioning configs and im still getting this problem. its bringing me to think theres a motherboard problem. and i might reflash the bios just to see will i get anything out of that,

does anyone know what the problem is? and also does anyone know of a bootable cd that will examine all my hardware? similar to memtest86 only for the whole machine


thanks
sean

majiktripp

Have you switched the IDE cable or swapped the connector from the CD/Drives with the Cable for the hard drive(s).
See if theres a bios update for the system and give that a go. Does sound very strange, is the boot order CD 1st then HDD? Try setting hard drive first in the boot order.

weeder

ive done all that, bios is the last thing i can try really which im going to try now

weeder

oh how great the dell aplication asks you to insert a floppy so it can put the bios files onto it

how great when the system in question has no floppy drive, ah well ill put one in temporarily

weeder

ok flashing the bios failed to fix it

weeder

anyone?

junior_apollo

Toss it and visit the outlet store...

weeder

junior_apollo wrote: »

Toss it and visit the outlet store...

as already mentioned its a neighbours pc

junior_apollo

On a serious note - it has to be a hardware problem...

Have you tried removing everything unessential for a boot.. as in expansion cards, cd-drives everything... and try... then put them back in one by one trying to find which ones..

Was there any mods to the comp - new ram? (Could be an issue if more ram added and board cant handle it.. or dodgy ram even)

Sorry im just trying to rule out the obvious... but from the sounds of it you know what your doing and have probably rules out these already....

Let me know about the above and we'll go from there...

weeder

nah, its completeley stock with one stick of ram

RubyXI

when i got a dell pc it did something that sounds similar to that, rang dell and they had no idea. it was new so they took it back n gave me a new one. But if that pc used to work, maybe it's different

weeder

hmmm , decided to try and boot with only the hard disk and no other drives,hard disk set first in boot order, and i got this-Boot Device not availible Press F......(etc)

tried 2 hard disks and got that , no hdd activity during this time either


but going into bios does detect a hdd the size of the one thats in it

junior_apollo

Ya well ya may need either a floppy or disc drive attached or else it will throw stuff at ya...

I just meant any additional drives, (I think they need some form of a disc drive as they will search them aswell as the hard drive - even when the hard drive is set to boot first)

If you have spare ram around try swapping that in to confirm it aint dodgy ram causing it...

weeder

well theres no hard drive in the stock system but you can press F1 to bypass that particular bit and then it should boot into windows but i get boot device not availible

for the other drives you get (secondary Master failure or similar


will try ram now

junior_apollo

weeder wrote: »

well theres no hard drive in the stock system but you can press F1 to bypass that particular bit and then it should boot into windows but i get boot device not availible

for the other drives you get (secondary Master failure or similar


will try ram now

Sorry I misunderstanding that bit there... there is no hard-drive? :eek:
Regardless of what drives are attached u need a hard-drive attached?...

Thats where windows is and thats where ur booting into...

Sorry maybe i misunderstanding whats been said...:D
Ya try the ram anyway though... then explain that bit? haha

Sherifu

The absence of a hard drive would be a mood killer, like totally.

Jackovarian

it sound like your hard drive is shot.
had a similar problem with an old maxtor drive. it seemed ok, but would never boot.

try blanking the whole hard drive, then check the system info to see if its all ok.
then try re-loading windows. if youve already done this i cant help.

weeder

lol sorry my bad that was a typo, shouldve said ram:o ram didnt change anything so its looking more and more towards a new mobo

delly

The PSU maybe?

weeder

i cant really see how sincei can get the machine to boot into windows if i boot from a cd and dont "press any key to boot from cd"

junior_apollo

ya well im tending to agree with either the HDD is fecked or the botherboard is shagged somewhere along the line..

BUT if your gonna go to the hassle of replacing parts like that I'd say dont bother...

Tell them its shagged... tell them to get a new comp

If they aint using it for stuff other than usual word processing and simple surfing etc u'll pick up one dirt cheap... You can then just connect in the hard drive and move stuff over from there... (ACTUALLY >>>)

If you've a second computer.. swap in that hard drive and boot into it on the second computer (your own)....

if that works well then you know its mboard related...

I still say get a new comp... haha... I love spending time fixing them but I also am an avid fan of replacing them when push comes to shove...

junior_apollo

weeder wrote: »

i cant really see how sincei can get the machine to boot into windows if i boot from a cd and dont "press any key to boot from cd"

From this comment alone though I'm willing to bet its the HDD

Jackovarian

i agree. it is your hdd man.

just bin it and slap in a new one.

if you go to a pc repair place they can check you hdd in two seconds, probably for free aswell. just pluck it out and take it down to somebody.

weeder

i dont think its the hdd, i plugged in another and got the same problem (debian on the other hdd) but ill format it and try again and see what happens

weeder

yup, same thing.

delly

i'll say it again, the power supply could be causing the issue, had it a couple of weeks back with an iqon PC. Rebooting non stop, in popped a new PSU and it was sorted.

weeder

nah, tried another dell psu,same thing. it is most probabaly the motherboard

delly

frustrating these problems are, use the force

Saruman

OK i have not read all the posts... just the first couple... its late. This may have been addressed.
It sounds almost like the hard disk is not spinning up fast enough. By starting off the cd first, the hard disk has time to spin up then. This was a problem on some of the gateways years ago.

See if there is a hard disk predelay setting in the bios, that way the bios will hold off booting for so many seconds to let the drive spin up correctly.

weeder

yeah i can try that now.