This post is more than 5 years old
18 Posts
0
15477
March 9th, 2009 21:00
Cannot boot off of Dell Windows CD
I have a Dimension 4550 400MHz FSB computer. Recently, it was hit very hard by a virus infection. I decided to reformat the hard drive and reload the OS. Problem is that the PC will not boot off of the Dell Windows CD. One thing that is weird is that the BIOS shows an unknown device as Primary Drive 1. Primary Drive 0, the main harddrive shows up fine and boots. But there is nothing attached as Primary Drive 1. If I turn the device off in the BIOS, it will boot without giving me a warning. The BIOS does see both a CD-RW at Secondary Drive 1 and a DVD ROM at Secondary Drive 0. When I put a known good Dell Windows CD into either of the drives and press F12 for the boot menu and select IDE CD-ROM, I get a message to strike F1 to retry boot or F2 for setup utility. I tried to swap the IDE cable for the Primary Drives but it shows the same issue with Primary Drive 1.
does this sound like a motherboard failure? Could it be a memory issue? Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
1
March 10th, 2009 11:00
You mention that the device on the secondary drive 0 is a DVD ROM. Is that where you are putting the Windows CD? Only the master device on an IDE port will support booting. That will be drive 0, and this drive will be the device on the last connector of the IDE ribbon. If the DVD ROM won't boot the Windows CD, try moving the end connector to the CD ROM drive and try again.
Mary G
6 Operator
•
20.1K Posts
0
March 9th, 2009 21:00
Move the cd drive up to first boot device in the bios ahead of the hard drive and the unknown primary 1 drive, save the setting and reboot with the cd in the drive. The cd drive will not show up as a primary drive.
bpiela
18 Posts
0
March 10th, 2009 09:00
My Boot Sequence is 1) IDE CD-ROM Device, 2) Diskette Drive, 3) Hard-Disk Drive C:. The harddrive is on a different IDE cable than the CD-ROMs. I still cannot boot off of the CD-ROM. When I put in the CD, I see some fast LED flashes and then the LED is off. I tested the power supply for fun and it tested fine. I understand that the CD drive will not show up as a primary drive because it is connected to a seperate IDE cable. If, when booting, I hit the F12 key, I go to the Boot Device Menu. From there, I can select IDE CD-ROM Device to boot off of. When I do that, I get a message to strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility. Not sure what is wrong.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
0
March 10th, 2009 12:00
You are very welcome. Best of luck to you.
bpiela
18 Posts
0
March 10th, 2009 12:00
It looks like the DVD-ROM drive was bad. I was able to boot off of the Diagnostic partition of the hard drive and run diagnostics. When I put the Dell Windows CD in the CD-RW, the tests passed. When I put the CD into the DVD-rom, I got an error that the disk had no digital data on it. I did not remember that the master device was the only device that supports booting. Moving the end connector to the CDROM did the trick. Thank you very Jack for pointing this out to me. I greatly appreciate it.
doriley
1 Message
0
October 26th, 2011 14:00
I know this an old thread but how do you swap connectors. Need to go inside computer?
jackshack
6.4K Posts
0
October 26th, 2011 15:00
What model computer are you using? The advice in this thread applied to a computer that uses PATA IDE/ATA, an interface that uses a wide ribbon cable for the data interface. Most computers built in the last four years use SATA drives, something completely different from the old PATA drives.