That's a pretty bad one indicating a possible bad hard drive.

When it POSTs (you see the blue DELL letters), press the control-alt-d keys at the same time to run the internal hard drive test on it.  If the test results in a bad hard drive, get Dell on the phone to get a call placed for a new one.

Thanks you for responding - To all members for future reference the below troubleshooting procedure solved my problem from Dell support..

The following steps can also initiate this error condition.


1. If there are no IDE devices connected to the Primary and the
secondary controller connector
2. Powering the system up and entering CMOS setup.
3. Pressing "ALT-F" to enter the bios defaults.
4. Replacing a CMOS battery


To resolve the issue,perform the below given steps:


1. Disconnect the AC power cable
2. Reseat all IDE cables to all IDE devices.
3. Reseat all power cables to all IDE devices
4. Power the system on, and press "F2" to enter System setup.
5. Press "ALT F" to enable the IDE controllers
6. Reboot and press "F2" to enter setup.
7. Highlight "Boot sequence" and press enter.
8. Press "Alt F" to rebuild the boot sequence.

Repeat steps 4 through 6 until all IDE devices are correctly
identified in the CMOS main page and in Boot sequence list.


Could could you please connect the hard drive in place of cdrom
drive and then check whether the system detects the hard drive.
Also, connect the cdrom drive on the primary IDE controller [where
the hard drive is connected] on the motherboard to make sure
that the IDE controller is ok.