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Is it ok to ask for advice on a Dell Gen4 system?

Post Date: 2010-10-05
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Is it ok to ask for advice on a Dell Gen4 system?
    Posted: 05 Oct 2010 at 9:09am
Before everyone gets upset, I do own a recently purchased DS system and i wouldnt be asking for advice on a dell unless I was completely stuck.
 
I copied and pasted this description from a post I found from another guy who had the exact problem. 
 
The computer is a 5 year old Dell Gen4 Windows XP Home Edition.  
 
The problem appeared to be that computer would not boot. I attempted booting normally- it starts accessing the drive to boot, and gets to a certain point at which it stops and restarts. When loading in safe mode, I get a list of files being accessed to load, which streams to a point, when it stops and just accesses the hard drive constasntly for 30 seconds -> 1 minute before restarting again. When I boot in Safe Mode with Command Prompt, the same happens.

I tried booting off of a Boot Disk, but get as far as it asking me to enter command prompts. When I type in c: to get it to load that drive, it says, 'Invalid drive path' (or something along those lines). This also happens when entering d: or e:, despite it having 2 cd/dvd drives.
I haven't found anywhere where this issue has been solved. any ideas would be welcomed.


 
 
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 06 Oct 2010 at 11:09am
I have my answer.
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 06 Oct 2010 at 11:52am
lol if "having your answer" is inferring that becusae you didnt get an answer in 2 hours that no one will help you.. thats a little impatient, dont you think?
 
there is a huge technical assistace guide, work your way through that, let us know how it goes
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 06 Oct 2010 at 3:49pm
II was hoping you'd respond ender. I've seen several guides that I have been sifting through, but I'm not exactly sure which one you refer to. Here is what I have done so far.
 
1. Try to boot to safe mode.
 
Result: System begins to load files then gets to a point where it appears to stall. after 30sec to 1 min it reboots.
 
2. Tried to boot to last good config.
 
Result: System begins to boot then the windows XP screen appears with the scroll bar moving from left to right, then it reboots.
 
3.Tried to boot from CD.
 
Result: refer to #1
 
4. Boot from floppy disk.
 
Result: System appears to boot and gets to dos screen, but when you try to change directory to c: it gives a not present error.
 
5. Made sure than the power and SATA connections were not loose.
 
Result: no effect on problem.
 
6. Reseated my 1 G ram sticks and tested them individually in each slot.
 
Result: no effect on problem.
 
7. Tried to use recovery console to repair windows installation.
 
Result: after hitting r for repair the computer would bring up the checking HD screen and but after letting it run for 2 hours, it appears that it had not progressed at all.
 
8. I have read other things pertaining to fixing MBR, boot ini etc, but I don't know how to attempt these possible solutions when I can't boot system.
 
9. I think it's unlikely to be a virus. I keep Norton 2010 updated everytime system is used, I run several spyware apps and I dont do anything on this computer that I dont do on my others.
 
10. I've tried to turn off automatic reboot in bios, but dont seem to have this option. Maybe this setting was added after 2005?
 
I'm continuing to search internet for solutions. I've seen this problem mentioned in countless posts, but nobody has posted a solution. (what the hell?)
 
One more thing that may or may not be relevant. The problem happened suddenly. The day before it would not boot, I had it powered up,watched some videos and shut it down with no problems. The next time I used it, it wouldnt boot.
 
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 06 Oct 2010 at 4:03pm
sounds like hardware failure to me, you said boot to cd failed but not which cd you tried booting to, if you put in your windows cd and try to boot to that, what happens?
if it hangs with the windows cd inserted, what is the longest you have let it sit there trying to boot to the windows cd?
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 8:09am
I tried to boot from the windows XP cd. It gets to the win xp screen with the blue status bar and then reboots after ~30 secs.
 
I have tried to repair the installation from the win xp CD. After hitting r for repair, the scrren displays a screen that says "sectors" with I guess the number of sectors on HD. I guess system is trying to chk dsk the hard drive. Unfortunately it seems like it never starts. The initial number of sectors never changes. I have let this run for +1 hour with no change.
 
I have also tried to boot from the Norton 2010 cd (i didnt know you could do this till i read a post). system begins to boot but never finishes. It does not reboot itself in this case, but it never fully boots up either. I have let it go for 1.5 hours to see if it would fully boot. It did not. when I came back to check, the screen was totally grey.
 
There's no rush in fixing this system because of my DS backup, but it's a good opportunity to learn something with little risk. I honestly would like to know exactly what went wrong here. How would you begin to troubleshoot a hardware issue?
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 8:55am
did you already try to reset the cmos?
 
hdd damage troubleshooting its pretty basic, you try another one, if it works, the first one is likely fubar :(
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 2:40pm
I didn't reset CMOS. I will try this today when I get home.
 
I do have a question. Is it possible to boot from cd without a HD installed?
I was thinking that even if my HD was bad I would be able to boot from cd.
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 3:35pm
i dont believe so, though honestly i have not tried
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AmbientChong11 View Drop Down
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Posts: 216 		  Quote AmbientChong11 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 3:51pm
Originally posted by Alci

I do have a question. Is it possible to boot from cd without a HD installed?
I was thinking that even if my HD was bad I would be able to boot from cd.
 
Boot the OS CD without a HD? You can set it as boot from CD drive in BIOS (something like Boot, Boot Options or under Advanced Options), insert the CD, and restart.  


Edited by AmbientChong11 - 07 Oct 2010 at 3:52pm
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 3:56pm
right but the system may require a working hdd to be connected before booting to anything, likely some read/write would need to happen for the boot to cd to even work
he wasnt asking how, just if it would work, at least thats how i understood it
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 07 Oct 2010 at 4:22pm
Yes I was asking if you could boot successfully without a HD. I was under the assumption that you could and since I wasnt able to boot from cd concluded that that the HD was working. It looks like this is an incorrect assumption,
 
I have a second HD. I will try to boot from CD with it installed as master as see what happens. This will probably by Friday though, since I'm swamped today. thx for input.


Edited by Alci - 07 Oct 2010 at 4:22pm
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 08 Oct 2010 at 7:44am

I think my HD is bad. I installed my other HD and tried to boot to the Norton 2010 CD. It worked. Unfortunately I still have data that I want to keep on this drive so I cant install XP on it yet. I will order a HD from newegg today and hopefully this will be the end of this issue.
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 08 Oct 2010 at 8:33am

yea, bad hdds are a rare problem (in my exp) but anything can happen, glad you seem to have found the source of the problem
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 08 Oct 2010 at 3:20pm
I have never had a bad HD either (not counting an external one that crapped out).
I'll post back when I receive the new HD and tell you how it goes. thx man.
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Alci View Drop Down
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Posts: 250 		  Quote Alci Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Oct 2010 at 7:58am
Update: I received a recertified HD from Newegg yesterday, Put it in and was able to install Win XP with no problems. It's funny because I dismissed the possibility that I had a bad HD earlier because my system would not boot from CD. I guess you still need a HD when booting from any peripheral devices like CD or USB.
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Oct 2010 at 8:42am
yea i think its becuase for any i/o use past the bios the system has to have something to write to, i could be wrong, but it makes sense to me
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