cant boot up

As this is a new PC, it would be best to contact Dell Support.

However, with the initial boot error message about the "diskette drive 0 seek failure"  it would appear the BIOS (Setup) is set to boot from a floppy diskette.  Press F2 to enter the setup and disable the floppy diskette and make sure the hard drive is set as the first boot device.  If this doesn't fix it, your only option is to call Dell support - they are the only ones that can fix it if there is a hardware problem.

thank you Fireberd - you have enabled me to boot up now that I disabled the floppy, but I still get the same error message

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE “diskette drive 0 seek failure.  Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup"

F1 enables me to boot, but without pressing that key I remains frozen

Getting closer.... anyone with other ideas?

tia

tecolote

All the extra "junk" that you have added to your posts makes it hard to read.  How are you adding this?  Can't you just type in the posting block?   If you are creating the post in some other program and then pasting it into the forum, it's not really compatible. 

It still sounds like the Diskette drive is enabled in the BIOS or if you are disabling it, are you saving the updates when you exit the BIOS?  Also, if you just restart Windows (not a power off and power on) will it start without problems?  And if there are no problems on a restart, do  a shutdown the PC and then Power up and do you get the error?  If you do, it sounds like the battery backup for the BIOS is bad. 

But, a little clearer post, that is readable without the extra stuff will really help.

Fireberd is an astute diagnostician on two counts. 

1.  I drafted the message in Word (to share it with others) which populated the query with gobbledegook. 

2.  The floppy was enabled in the BIOS, which once disabled, fixed the problem

Touche on both accounts and thank you for the assist

tecolote