No boot device after wipe drive

Question

AFter battling a slow machine I decided to wipe my hard drive clean and start over.....Now I can't even boot up. My Dell Dimension 4700 now says no boot device when I start it up. I even have my restore cd in my CD drive and it won't read from that. If I press F2 I am able to see that the system sees my devices (hard drive, CD drive and DVD/RW drive). The wipe drive softawre said that I would be able to reinstall my OS (XP Home) by placing the CD in my CD drive and restarting the PC, but it isn't working out that way. Anything I have missed? My lights on the back are A,B, C all solid green. D is solid amber. ANy help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Davet50 · Answer

this is from the manual for the light sequence

Ensure that the cables are properly connected to the system board from the hard drive, CD drive, and DVD drive.
If there is an error message on your screen identifying a problem with a device (such as the floppy drive or hard drive), check the device to make sure it is functioning properly.
The operating system is attempting to boot from a device (such as the floppy drive or hard drive); check system setup
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
to make sure that the boot sequence is correct for the devices installed on your computer.
If the problem persists, contact Dell (see your Owner's Manual).

I suspect it is due to the no boot device message.

here is proably your issue. You need to load the SATA drivers at the start of the OS install. You will need a couple of floppy disks not sure how many but have a few on hand. Download the file from Here

Follow the instructions to creat the SATA driver disk.

Start the Os install and it will ask you for the drivers and ask you to press F6 to load the driver have the floppy(s) in the drive at this point. It should load the driver and then continue on with the Os install..

Jwheel87 · Answer

Same exact issue (same system too, 4700), I can't even get to the CD install to install any drivers.

x_lab rat · Answer

You will not be able to boot to anything as long as you have a yellow D light. Unplug ALL USB except keyboard and mouse. USB peripherals are notorious for preventing boot.

Wipe the surface of the install disc with Windex. One fingerprint is enough to prevent it from being recognized as valid media.

Set F2 boot sequence to CDD/HDD. Though if HDD has no boot sector, it normally defaults to CDD.

Listen to the CDD at startup, with your ear right down next to it. It should go z-z-z-z-t and spin up. If it goes z-z-z-z-t, t-z-z-z-z 3 times then stops, it is not able to read the disc.

Jwheel87 · Answer

I've tried 2 dell os disks same issue, and both drives, same thing. I've semibooted it off a USB to SATA drive that had xp on it from an old PC (blue screened out on me during logo loading).

x_lab rat · Answer

You may be looking at a memory failure, jwheel.  They're not common in a years-old system, but they do happen.

Robin24k · Answer

If you have compatible memory from a working system, you can swap memory modules. If not, take all modules except one and see if it will boot up. Test all of them and see which one is defective.

Jwheel87 · Answer

How do I test that?   I've reset the cmos, nothing. I hooked up an old cd-rom via usb and after the bios load a cursor just blinked in the top left while the drive spinned forever...

Jwheel87 · Answer

W00T!! Replaced the DVD Drive and it booted!!

x_lab rat · Answer

Sorry, I should have mentioned that any failed connected drive can hang boot at light #4.  Odd coincidence the DVD failed at the same time you wiped C.  But as I say at least once a day, anything can happen.

cctechrep · Answer

Thank you all. Your suggestions were great. Once I read the reply from Jwheel87 a light went off in my head. I have 2 CD/DVD drives and one I knew was bad, but I was using the other as my first boot device so I never thought that a bad CD drive would cause me not to be able to boot from the other. I have been digging around in computers since 1984 and I still learn something new everyday. Sometimes (most times) it is the simplest answer that cures the problem. Thanks again to all for your input.

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No boot device after wipe drive

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