Inspiron 2650 boot problems

Question

Recently my 2 year old Inspiron 2650 has been having trouble booting up the OS   When powered up instead of going to the Windows XP logo screen it says initializing MBA, then goes into some Pre Boot Execution routine and eventually displays  No Operating System Found   Several power cycles later and it will eventually boot correctly.   After an hours use, or once it has warmed up, it seems to reboot every time, until the next day when it has been turned off over night.   Any Ideas, anyone ?

Mount1003 · Answer

What is the cost of a new Hard drive if that is the problem?

ejn63 · Answer

Slide the hard drive out and back in. Run the Dell diagnostics on the drive. If the problems continue, your hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced.

Ed C · Answer

The diagnostic program is on the drivers and utilities disk.

I have worked on a couple of 2650's and most of the time reseating all the components fixs the problem. So try reseating the CPU, video card and cable, memory and the hard drive.

I new hard drive can be had for under $100 but you can get a really good one for just over $100. From your first post I really don't think it's a hard drive problem as if it was more than likely it would fail more often when the unit was warmed up. Since your problem happens on a cold system that makes me think it is a component that is not seated properly and once the unit warms it makes better contact.

Mount1003 · Answer

Is the Dell Diagnostics a download or should I have it in the selection of discs that I received with the machine

--CMOS-- · Answer

What sites have you been going too -- LOL??

Not the sort that you are thinking of.

But the best thing to do is to back-up all of your data. And re-install your OS.

Already done this :(

Before you do this you should format your MBR. You can find out how to to this thru a bootable-disk at many sites. This is the problem and what I said will fix this. There is a way to edit your MBR manually but it is best that you just re-install and re-write all.

Won't a full reformat during the XP re-install delete any problems though?

Dell Technical have also been involved and suggest that after some diagnostic tests, the drive is failing.

Mount1003 · Answer

What sites have you been going too -- LOL??

Not the sort that you are thinking of.

But the best thing to do is to back-up all of your data. And re-install your OS.

Already done this :(

Before you do this you should format your MBR. You can find out how to to this thru a bootable-disk at many sites. This is the problem and what I said will fix this. There is a way to edit your MBR manually but it is best that you just re-install and re-write all.

Won't a full reformat during the XP re-install delete any problems though?

Dell Technical have also been involved and suggest that after some diagnostic tests, the drive is failing.

--CMOS-- · Answer

Most of the time it does not re-write the ENTIRE MBR so it is useless just to simply do a regular format.  It simply just re-writes over the XP part and does not delete the other things in it. Have Fun!       OBTW:  I was just kidding about the sites man.

Mount1003 · Answer

Problem solved, a new HD and all is well again

designs321 · Answer

First of all please send me your old HD cuz it is still good.

He was right in telling you that you have to format MBR.

If you have a corrupt MBR it will not load XP correctly

easy solution......

Boot from win98 cd

Start PC with CD ROM support

At the A: prompt type fdisk (answer yes to both questions asked)

Select 3 delete partition

Select 4 delete non dos partition

once deleted select

1 create partition

1 create Primary Dos Partition (you must do this or When you reboot it will still be NTFS}

hit ESC to get back to A: prompt

when finished with that ,

at the A: prompt type fdisk /mbr

then reboot with XP cd in and install it

and in xp setup del partition and create new partition with NTFS format

There might be a quicker way but I do this every time i redo a Xp system

this will also stop the dreaded screen where you have to pick an operating system

before it will load into windows

:)

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Inspiron 2650 boot problems

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