No boot device available help dimension 9150 windows xp

You cannot install win 7 unless you fix the missing or failed hard drive. Run the Extended Hard Drive test from the boot menu. F2 is for the bios. You can use that to see if the hard drive is recognized or there is a mistake in the boot order. A dead bios battery would not cause this error. That would affect your date and time calculations. Make sure you remove all external drives and disks in any cd, dvd, or sd drive. A forgotten disk could cause this.

how would i go about doing that ???

Information on how to run the diagnostics here:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=A9E3A15597A04AFBB02EE16785D39C5C&c=us&l=en&s=dhs

And one more thing to try...

See if you can boot from a bootable CD, such as your Dell XP Reinstallation CD or your Dell Resources CD. If it boots, that tells you that the motherboard is OK , and could point you at a failed hard drive, a damaged boot sector, or a malware infection...

Ron

What color are the 4 diagnostic LEDs on front of the tower when you get that error message? If not all green, look up error code here. 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Power off an unplug from the wall. Press/hold power button on tower for ~15 sec. Open the case and carefully unplug and reseat the SATA cable connectors on both the motherboard and on the hard drive.

Reboot and press F2 to enter BIOS setup. Look for  SATA Drives 0 through 3 and  make sure that SATA0 is enabled (on) and that  the  SATA Operation option is set to RAID Autodetect/AHCI. Save the changes and exit setup.

If the hard drive still isn't recognized, run BIOS setup again and change SATA Operation to RAID Autodetect/ATA, save that change and see what happens.

Ron

did everthing yu said and still it says no boot device available,

when i changed SATA Drive 1 to on it said drive 1 not found: serial ATA, SATA-1 strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setuo utility,

Your boot drive is connected to SATA0, so turning SATA1 on won't help fix this problem, and you'll just get that error message.

Are you saying all diagnostic LEDs are green?

And are you saying it won't boot from a bootable CD? Are you sure it actually tried to boot from the CD? Reboot and press F12. Select "Boot from CD" from the list, while the bootable CD is in the drive and the drawer is closed. And if you have more than one optical drive, try both of them...

And if it won't boot from either a bootable CD or from the hard drive, you may have a motherboard problem...

Ron

One more...

When you removed the battery from the motherboard, was the tower unplugged, and did you press/hold the power button on the tower for ~30 sec before reinstalling the battery?

If the date and clock didn't lose the correct settings , then BIOS wasn't actually cleared, so you may need to try that again.

Ron

i have the norton internet security 2006 disk, it says that the disc can be used as an emergency boot disk if  PC configuration supports booting from a CD but anytime i put it in it does nothing,

You haven't answered our questions:

1. What color are the 4 diagnostic LEDs?

2. Did you run the extended hard drive tests from the Utilities partition?

3. Did you reboot and press F12 and then use the menu to force it to boot from the optical drive?

     You may have to go into BIOS  setup (reboot and press F2)  and change the boot sequence to put the optical drive first, if you can't make it boot from the

     CD using the F12 menu.

4. Did you unplug from the mains and then remove the battery and press/hold the power button for ~30 sec before reinstalling it?

5. Did you turn SATA1 off again?

6. Do you possibly have a non-bootable floppy disk in a floppy drive, assuming you have a floppy drive?

Ron

Donal - post your responses here so everyone can see them.

1. the first 3 lights are green the 4th flashes when i start up the computer and then goes off.

2. Tried to run the utility partition but it says that utility partition not available strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

3. Tired to it force it to boot from the optical drive but said no selected boot device available

4. yea i unplugged it from the main, removed the cover the battery and holded the power button for 3o seconds

5. SATA 1 is turned off

I presume a known bootable CD was in the drive when you tried to force boot from the optical drive...

Since nothing seems to help, it's begiinng to sound like the motherboard  (or CPU) may have failed. :emotion-9:

If this system uses a SATA optical drive, go into BIOS and turn the corresponding SATA port off. Then power off and unplug. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec. Open the case and strip it down to barest minimum. Disconnect all drives, except boot hard drive, remove all PCI cards, except video card, disconnect network connection, remove all RAM modules except the one in slot one. Remove the motherboard battery and press/hold power button for ~30 sec. Reinstall the battery and  see if it boots with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected. 

If it won't boot, power off, unplug, etc and start swapping RAM modules one at a time into slot one.  Always power off etc before adding/removing hardware.

If it still won't boot, go  into BIOS setup again. Turn SATA0 off  (hard drive) and turn the SATA port for the optical drive on. Then open the case, disconnect the hard drive and  reconnect the optical drive. Do the battery thing again and see if it boots now.

And if none of that works, you may need a new motherboard (or CPU)...

Ron