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Still unable to get into Bios
I bought a new hard drive a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Ultra ATA/100 with 120GB. This hard drive is not recognized by my computer, I have tried Master then slave and even cable select nothing is working. I am running a XP Pro SP3 CD to put on the drive. The mother board I have is a Dell E210882. I can't seem to find anywhere what to press to get into the bios to see if the ATA is enabled or other things, I'm not sure. The drive vibrates slightly while on which tells me it's turning inside. The hard drive I had in the computer does not boot anymore so that is why I bought this new one. I have a Dell Dimension 3000. I have tried the Ctrl+F11, F2, F12, Ctrl+Alt+Del and just plain Del, F8, and nothing is getting me into bios. F2 that was mentioned brings me to setup their are no places to check channels. They do ask about boot sequence and security, and 12 other things but not the one thing that was suggested online about seeing if ATA is enabled or stuff like that. If you can't help me get into bios can someone help me to have this new drive installed and recognized? There is also a Service Tag at the very top of the setup page from F2 button which reads "removed by admin" and my Bios is a Phoenix Rom Bios Plus Version 1.10 A03 if that means anything. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
0
October 26th, 2011 18:00
Pressing F2 during the self test after you start the computer takes you to System Setup. That is the screen that allows you to change the BIOS settings that can be changed, so you evidently are able to get to the BIOS. With regard to ATA; when the Dimension 3000 was designed and built, ATA was the only setting possible, so it is always ATA. You don't see any options as the computer has no provision for a SATA drive. Your only choices with regard to the ports for the hard drive(s) and optical drive(s) are to turn them to Auto or On, or Off.
Dells that use PATA (IDE/ATA, also called EIDE) must have the drives jumpered to Cable Select (CS, CSEL). The primary drive must be connected to the end connector of the ribbon style IDE cable as otherwise it will not be recognized as a boot drive. In order to recognize the drive, the port it is connected to must be set to Auto (if available) or On. When you make this setting it is important to exit the System Setup page using the option to Save Changes if you have made any. Also, the first time you set a port to Auto you may not see the hard drive listed; many Dells require you to restart the computer in order to read the drive data into the BIOS so you may see Unknown until the first time you restart.
The only way you will be able to boot the computer is by using a bootable installation disk for the operating system you are planning to install. Once you have installed the operating system you will be able to boot the computer from the hard drive. For help on installing Windows, see the third link on this page: Restoring or Reinstalling Windows on a Dell.
EDIT: For future reference, please don't post your service tag number on this site. Forum rules prohibit it and the Dell Terms of Use team will simply delete it once they find this thread.