iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 my friend reformatted his computer.. and he says the only thing that he can access is setup. It's a laptop, it's a dell inspirion. He tried loading windows xp on it but it says non-system disk error and he does not get a dos prompt. They have also tried loading dos in it. apparently that doesnt work either. any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mikro137 Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 its a bios issue , im almost certain of it. go into the bios (f2 i believe on dells) and set the boot priority to have the cdrom boot first. that should solve it. email me , and ill give you specific manuals and shit if needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClueTwo Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 You can not do a clean install with Windows Xp..Tell him he must put an earlier version of windows onto the drive and then UPGRADE to Windows XP..If he needs help passed that I can probably be of some help, but let me know what's up.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mikro137 Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by ClueTwo You can not do a clean install with Windows Xp..Tell him he must put an earlier version of windows onto the drive and then UPGRADE to Windows XP..If he needs help passed that I can probably be of some help, but let me know what's up.. thats total bullshit. im not only claiming im an expert , but i have the credentals to prove it. mikro137/mcp since 2000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 he says it still doesnt work, could you give me a word for word explanation? i dont have your email. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by mikro137 its a bios issue , im almost certain of it. go into the bios (f2 i believe on dells) and set the boot priority to have the cdrom boot first. that should solve it. so when you say cdrom, you really mean hard drive, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
effyoo Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 this exact same thing happened to me after i reformatted my hard drive too. like mikro said: when you turn on the computer hold down F2 or F8 (or one of those keys). it will take you to a setup screen. find the thing that says boot priority or something similar. it might not be right there, you might have to dig around a bit. change it to cd-rom from fixed disk or whatever. its really simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mikro137 Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by iloveboxcars he says it still doesnt work, could you give me a word for word explanation? i dont have your email. stevemikrojones@hotmail.com if you do aim , send me you name and ill walk you through it j: you need to take an a+ course effyou - you are dead on. dells thougha re weird and sometimes have seperate boot prioority bios (especially on that family) and you cjange em in seperate menus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 if all he can access is setup, the only device that the comp is booting from is the cdrom. why in the world would you want to switch it to cdrom? j/lets see how long this goes on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 aim: disasterrrrrrrrr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunm Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 ILoveBoxCars... can you please email me? cambodiaholiday@yahoo.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by LENS ILoveBoxCars... can you please email me? cambodiaholiday@yahoo.com sent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 keep us updated on how this works out, boxcars Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by j keep us updated on how this works out, boxcars well, the first thing didnt work, and whats his name hasnt sent me a message yet so nothing else has happened. could you go into detail about what you think i should do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Originally posted by iloveboxcars well, the first thing didnt work, and whats his name hasnt sent me a message yet so nothing else has happened. I see. How far through setup did he get? I'm not rocking AIM, unfortunately, or I'd hop on and make this a bit easier. If he is not getting past the initial blue screen part of setup, the comp is not able to boot from the hard drive to complete the XP installation. The BIOS should be set to have the hard drive as a boot device. If the BIOS cannot see the hard drive, as in it is not being detected when you power up, then there is no way you can get anywhere. You will be repeatedly dumped into the initial XP setup process. I am curious if the XP installer sees a hard drive present at all. If you could step me through exactly what happens when you try to install XP, that would be helpful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 the hard drive isn't recognized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 In the BIOS or during the XP install? Or both? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 I forgot to mention that there is often an "autodetect" option in the BIOS to automagically detect the drive(s) that are hooked up. If the drive isn't detected, chances are: 1) drive is not plugged in/connected correctly, or 2) drive is dead. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 he says it isnt detected at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 he says there is no auto detect it says no primary drive detected and no optical drive detected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iloveboxcars Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 im pretty sure it isnt a connectivity problem, he has a laptop so the only way it would become not connected is through magic, he hasnt taken it apart.. and he takes good care of his electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Why exactly is he reformatting? Did it stop working all of a sudden? Sounds like something is faulty hardware-wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porque Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 ...pshhh...pc people... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 word Originally posted by porque ...pshhh...pc people... http://images.apple.com/powermac/images/indexhandles06232003.jpg'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Æ° Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 Sometimes with those brand name systems they will have a secondary partition on the hard drive that's very small. It can be used for things like system restore or sometimes they but the BIOS on the HDD. If he hosed both partitions it's possible the BIOS has been lost. Or if there was a 2nd partition for system restore purposes, maybe he didn't reformat the actual system partition but just the system restore one and he's trying to install on that one...who knows, it could be a number of problems. I guess I don't have any solutions to offer other than don't buy brand name shit because they are manufactured to operate a certain way, and sometimes it's hard to upgrade and make it your bitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 Originally posted by mikro137 thats total bullshit. im not only claiming im an expert , but i have the credentals to prove it. mikro137/mcp since 2000 You are living proof that certifications != intelligence. If you don't know the answer, don't open your mouth. j/schooling nerds for a living Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Quickwood Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 with some BIOS chips, older ones probably, you have to enter information about a hard drive like size and number of clusters or something, when you put in a new hard drive. maybe this plays into it somehow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fermentor666 Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 Originally posted by iloveboxcars he has a laptop so the only way it would become not connected is through magic My bad... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest j Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 Originally posted by ARCEL with some BIOS chips, older ones probably, you have to enter information about a hard drive like size and number of clusters or something, when you put in a new hard drive. maybe this plays into it somehow? That's correct. Being a laptop, I doubt it requires this information since you'd have to rip the thing open to get the C/H/S numbers off of the drive label. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StarzAbove Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 :lol: dude get a NEW dell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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