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10446
December 8th, 2003 09:00
F1 not working
Anybody come across this one before? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm running a Dimension 8250 / 3.06Ghz / 1.5 Gb Ram / WinXP.
After successfully running the disk defragmetation utility (I got a message saying drive defragmentation completed successully), I get the following message on power-up: "strike F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup"
If I press F1, nothing happens. And I mean nothing. It doesn't leave the screen, and it doesn't boot into windows. Just sits there with the same message, "strike F1 to retry or F2 to enter setup". No other keys will work after pressing F1. The only option is to turn the power off. I know the keyboard is working, because when I press F1, it beeps. I've tried leaving it for an extended period after pressing F1 to continue, but it never moves off this message.
If I press F2, it goes into the standard system setup screen, where I have tried: 1) clearing the event log, 2) clearing the nvram, and 3) resetting the system setup options to the default configuration as shipped from Dell's factory - all in the manner suggested on the dell support site. But still, when I power up, I get the same message, "strike F1 to retry or F2 to enter setup" - with the same results.
If I press F12, I can access the boot menu, where I have tried running the IDE Drive diagnostics and the main, only, drive passes the test.
Clearly, this leaves me stuck in an endless circle. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received.
Many thanks,
Pete
volcano11
2 Intern
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28K Posts
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December 8th, 2003 12:00
When the Message to press F1 or F2 is on the screen, look at the back of the tower for the four diagnostic lights. These may give a clue as to what the problem is. Interpretation of the light code can be found in your owners manual or at the following site:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/dim8250/advanced.htm#1084976
Report back what you find.
Steve
halsor
4 Posts
0
December 9th, 2003 08:00
Thanks for your help. All four lights are green, I was able to boot into the utility partition and run the diagnostics tools. When I run the IDE Disk - Read Test I get a message saying:
I suspect that it would let me reinstall windows XP, and it would just llay the software down around that data damaged block, but the disk would remain damaged. I'm still concerned that a windows reinstallation is a bit drastic and I may lose some data.
Unless anybody else has any bright ideas, it looks like I'll be spending the evening on the phone to dell support reading them the error codes!
Thanks again for your help!
Pete