“F1 to continue, F2 to setup” upon boot…why?

If new hardware has been recently installed into the computer it is likely that you are receiving the prompt "Press F1 or F2 to enter setup" because CMOS needs to verify that the new detected hardware is properly being setup in CMOS.

After entering setup you will see a menu depending on which PC you have. All will usually have an auto detect IDE hard drive option in all newer PC's. It is better to use this if possible. After you select the auto detect option you will see a list of numbers appear which are Cylinders, heads, and sectors. You will then be ask if you accept these settings. Select Y for yes and continue. Then your PC will try to detect all the other IDE devices starting with primary slave, then secondary master, then secondary slave. It will find all hard drives that are hooked up on your system.

The final step in CMOS is to save your work and exit. If you do not save what you did before exiting the last setup will be put back like it was before you started. You are now ready to reboot your PC. Make sure that you have the primary master hard drive the one that has the bootable operating system on it. When you boot up now you should see all drives listed in Windows.

Message Edited by JOKERSWILD on 11-01-2003 08:38 PM

after restarting the computer and when you WWW.DELL.COM start pressing F2. this will bring you to the BIOS. when you get to the BIOS, make sure that all the lights in your keyboard are lit up. Num Lock, CAPS Lock, and Scroll Lock. Start pressing on ALT-F until you get two beeps. Pressing ALT-F will make your BIOS automatically detect IDE drives in the system.

restart the computer.

do you still see F1 to continue, F2 to setup? if you still do, go back to the BIOS and find "System Event Log". press enter there and then go to "Clear System Event Log" and press enter. Press ESC and ESC again and save changes and exit.

restart the computer.

do you still see F1 to continue, F2 to setup? try to reseat the IDE cables. if you call Dell Technical Support they might ask you to upgrade your BIOS if you are using a Western Digital or Maxtor drives.

well... Good Luck!

ALPHA TRION

Message Edited by marco27 on 11-02-2003 07:38 AM

Reset the NVRAM - press F2 go into bios and make sure CAPLOCK, SCROLL LOCK, NUM LOCK is lit

press ALT E, ALT F you will hear a beep then hit escape and reboot it will go through a search function and locate all your hardware.

H4P

please go into the system setup, light all the keyboard light indicators (num lock, scroll lock and caps lock)

hold the "alt" key then press( in order) "E, F, B"

let the computer restart, it will say

detecting ide devices, or something like that..

hope this would work!

*A*L*P*H*A*T*R*I*O*N*

If there's no other text than this prompt, then BIOS is having problems locating a bootable disk/drive.

Try going into BIOS and pressing ALT+F to force BIOS to do a complete IDE reconfiguration.  Press ESC and enter to exit.....