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BIOS not detecting any booting devices
Hello. I recently got an old Dell computer from a friend. It has windows xp on it and boots just fine.
I decided to try and install Ubuntu on it.
First I shoved a Ubuntu cd in to the upper disk tray, but when I tried to select it in the BIOS it didn't show up. I only have a hard drive in the list together with four 'unknown devices'. I can't fix it. I tried the disk tray beneath, same thing. I tried an external cd reader, same thing. I tried one of those USB pen drives same thing.
I can always boot on to xp. That option to boot on the hard drive is always there. yeah, and some diskette reader of some sort.
i tried changing the button cell battery inside of the motherboard, as I heard that a weak CMOS battery might cause hardware detection malfunctions.
OptiGE
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June 29th, 2014 07:00
I solved it!!
Since there where two disk trays I was thinking maby the bios looked for the disk in the wrong place. So I removed one of the cables to leave only one of the cd rom readers plugged in. The bios found it and booted!
1. Changed the CMOS battery
2. unplugged and plugged the cords back in
3. Removed one of the cd readers
Stuff works. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint what the problem was, but I did those three things and now it works
OptiGE
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June 28th, 2014 16:00
Bios version is: Phoenix rom bios plus version a01
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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June 28th, 2014 17:00
It sometimes helps if you can tell us the model number. This is usually found somewhere on the front of the machine.
In the meantime, most Dells will bring up a one time boot menu if you press F12 during the self-test after starting or restarting the machine. If your optical drive is not found in that list, either the boot disk is bad, or the drive itself is defective.
With regard to the optical drives; if the Dell model you have uses the old PATA/IDE ribbon cable for these drives, it sometimes helps if you disconnect the drive on the middle connector, leaving only the drive at the end of the cable. If that drive still doesn't work, try moving the end connector to the second drive and try again. I've had some of these machines that won't boot from a PATA/IDE DVD/CD drive with a slave drive attached.
OptiGE
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June 29th, 2014 05:00
on the front of the case near the power button it reads: "Dimension 8250"
I guess that is the model number
About the moving around of cables, could you please describe the position of them instead? I don't know what a middle connector is... Nor end connector or any of that.
the cd /DVD drives are both functional. I've tried them out
i think that reason that it won't boot from USB either might be that the computer just does not support booting from USB. But all machines should support. Cd booting, right?
thank you :emotion-2:
OptiGE
5 Posts
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June 29th, 2014 07:00
update:
I pulled out and plugged the flat cords to the two cd drives out and in again.
now when entering the f2 menu, two CD-ROM reader shows up under hard disk. But when changing the boot order only one cd reader shows up.
when going to the f12 boot menu it looks like so:
1. Normal
2. IDE CD-Rom drive
3. System setup
4. IDE drive diagnostics
5. Boot to utility partition
enter a choice:
i choose 2
the I get
"strike f1 key to continue, f2 to run the setup utility
i choose f1
strike f1 key to retry boot, f2 for setup utility
if I press f1 the message loops. f2 just takes me back a few steps
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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June 29th, 2014 13:00
That is great! You did exactly what I suggested, but evidently my description was not adequate to convey my intent to you.
The disk drives in that model are all PATA/IDE. They use a "flat", or ribbon, cable to connect a master and a slave drive to the computer main board. There are three connectors on that cable. One goes to the mainboard, the second goes to the slave drive, and the connector at the far end of the cable goes to the master drive. Only the master drive on a PATA/IDE port will normally boot a disk, so trying the second drive was a good first attempt at solving your problem. The difficulty is that for some reason having a slave drive on the PATA/IDE channel used for the optical drives will sometimes interfere with the boot process on the master drive. That is why I suggested disconnecting the middle, or slave, connector while trying to boot the remaining drive that was on the last connector of the flat cable.
You did well, and I'm glad you have the computer up and running. Best of luck to you!