Dell Dilema!

wozelbeak

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I have been asked to get my neice's p.c up and running after it had a few problems.
its a dell and its ancient, a optiplex gx100.
any way, my question is about a problem with the bios. when i look in the boot priority, it only shows the disket A: available! no hard drive showing at all! i can't seem to find out how to get the gard drive to show up in the boot menue. has anyone got any ideas?
woz
 
Are u 100% sure that it is correctly plugged in the mobo?
If it is then try another hdd.

or

u could try flashing the bios
 
i reformated it then, i installed the o/s. it then rebooted, but it could not find the hdd in the boot priority, only the floppy.
so its not a problem with the hdd, its in the bios.
woz
 
wozelbeak said:
i reformated it then, i installed the o/s. it then rebooted, but it could not find the hdd in the boot priority, only the floppy.
so its not a problem with the hdd, its in the bios.
woz

ok, in that case the only thing I can think of is flashing the bios
 
no do not flash the bios...at least not yey....clear out the cmos...ther should be a jumper to set...usually 3 inline pins with a jumper connecting 2...and may be silk screened on the mainboard CMOS. Take the jumper off the the 2 pins and put in onto the other 2 pins,,,it will share the center pin in both configs. DO THIS WITH THE POWER OFF, PULL THE PLUG. leave it for a few minutes then put back ..plug back in and power up..if you do not get a cmos checksum error or the bios has retained the correct date, you got the wrong pins.
 
i already cleared the cmos.
it says that "warning your computer has been opened" when i boot it up.
the date was wrong after i cleared it, i have re-set it
ithis is what happens.
boot computer.
it says "alert cover was removed".
then it says
"strike f1 to retry boot, f2 setup utilities".
f2 enters me into the bios.
if i go to the boot sequence, it only shows the diskette A.
the only option is to enable or dissable.

i made a bootdisk, and downloaded a flash from dell, i put it on the disk and tried to boot with the disk in.
i hear it read the disk, then it shows A:\> in the dos.

what am i doing wrong?
woz
 
The fact that you managed to reinstall windows and if you haven't opened up the case inbetween that and since the problem started puts doubt on it being a BIOS problem. perhaps its to do with the Master boot record on the HDD itself, or the disk partition not being bootable. You can use the recovery console and the FIXBOOT (or FIXMBR, cant remember) to rewrite a new boot table to the disk.

Does the PC BIOS see the HDD? check by using F2 and see what block devices are present. Not just through Boot priority but through the Device listing screen itself.
 
the bios does not show a named device.
it shows,
PIMARY DRIVE 0 : UNKNOWN DEVICE
PIMARY DRIVE 1 : OFF
PIMARY DRIVE 2 : UNKNOWN DEVICE
PIMARY DRIVE 3 : OFF

YOU CAN GO INTO EACH DEVICE AND CHANGE ITS SETTINGS. DEVICE ZERO AND 2 ARE BOTH SET TO "AUTO". HOWEVER YOU CAN CHANGE THIS TO "OFF" OR THERE ARE ABOUT 40 OTHER SETTINGS FOR HDDS, WHICH STATE DRIVE PERAMETERS. BUT NONE OF THESE MATCH THE HDD.
WOZ

1, IS THE HDD, 2,3 ARE THE CDROM AND DVD.
 
well if 1 is the hardrive as you say, can't you change it from OFF, as in your given list, to Auto? as it is simply turned off if it says off.
 
0 is the hdd.
it is not like my own bios which i can do things with.
this dell bios sucks big time.
woz
 
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