Trouble with BIOS after replacing Hard Drive

Question

I am trying to resurrect a 'broken' office computer. Dimension 8100 that ran XP pro. It has two 100 gig HDs. The Primary HD died, so I disconnected it and connected the primary jumper to the other HD. I changed the little thingy on the back of it to the MA spot. When I boot up now it simply says strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility. I have the XP disc, but it wont automatically read it when I boot it up. I try to hit F2 while it boots so I can go into the BIOS and change/verify the boot sequence, but hitting F2 does nothing. The keyboard is a working keyboard, and the lights for caps lock/number lock do show. If I boot it without the keyboard plugged in it says 'Keyboard Failure' so I know it is acknowledging the keyboard to a certain extent. I tried booting with the keyboard plugged in to all the different USB ports (It is a USB keyboard).   BIOS Revision A08 by the way.   Is there something wrong with the system, or is it something simple I am missing, such as holding 'c' on a Toshiba to boot from the CD.   Thanks for any help, I've searched for hours on Forums and none have solutions for when you can't  get into the BIOS to begin with.

designer4life · Answer

hello i just recently experienced something similar to what you're going thru. I just installed a new hdd on my system and had it connected to the wrong cable. you may want to make sure that when you check the boot sequence that its set to and recognizes the secondary drive now as the master. If not then put the secondary drive back on the original connection from the mobo. When you hit f1 does it properly boot up or does the message keep repeating itself?

tstroud · Answer

Hi you might want to try putting the jumper on cable select, some Dell's need it to be on that to configure right, hope this helps   Terry

Popegrim · Answer

Thanks for the imput.  That would all be great, but It doesnt do anything when I strike F1 or F2, so I can't even get in to the BIOS to change anything. I checked the jumper cables multiple times to make sure I have it set as the primary master. THanks for any continuing help.

tstroud · Answer

Hi a sure fire way for the bios to be reset is to take out the motherboard battery and let it stay out for about 20 minutes, then put it back in, this may be some of you problem, you may need a new battery it will be a 2032 battery to replace it, also you may need to switch the hard drive jumper to Cable Select not Master, let me know what you find out,    Terry

tstroud · Answer

Hi make sure that the cable to the cd roms is secure you may want to pull the cable off and reconnect it, most of the time the top cd rom will be the one that boots in a 2 cdrom system, if that doesnt help maybe you should install a known good cd rom or you could try out some of the tweaks from this page:   http://www.the-predator.com/   make sure in the Bios boot menu that you have the CD Rom first and the Hard Drive second, hope this helps    Terry

Popegrim · Answer

ok I switched the jumper, and popped out the battery for 20 mins. I also figured out that my keyboard has an F-lock button ...  so I was able to get into bios and change the boot order to CD ROM before HD. I reboot and it says NTLRD is missing press alt+ctrl+del to restart. It still won't read from the CD ROM- there are two of them and I tried the CD in both... unless they're both broken I dunno what to do now

Popegrim · Answer

Thanks Terry for the help, I'm going to borow a CD ROM form a friend and try it out. The only problem is that now im getting some wierd warning beep when I turn it on, and it never even gets to the boot screen. The only thing i can think of is that i took out the graphics card to clean out the fan (clogged with dust). I got it working once, and now its back to just beeping whne i turn it on. I don't know if this thing is worth trying to fix >< Anyone know what that warning sound could be?

tstroud · Answer

Hi the best thing to do is reseat all of the cards and the memory and see if that will help, also try to listen to the computer when it beeps and see if you can tell what kind of beeps you are getting, they may be long beeps and short beeps so you have to listen close to them, let me know what you find out but first reseat everything that you can and that includes the cables and plugs also.  If there is allot of lint and dust in the computer you probably need to try to clean out all of that, but be careful not to touch any of the parts of the board with whatever you use to clean it with, I used compressed air myself, sometimes things may not seem to be worth trying to fix but always go as far as you can to see if you can fix it, you might learn something from it and if you get tired of messing with it you can always send it to me, lol,  have a great day   Terry

Popegrim · Answer

Hey Terry, thanks for all the help. Turns out both my CD ROMs were bad, and the computer wasn't recognizing the USB keyboard at certain times. So I pulled out all my cards, RAM etc and put them back in. Beeping stopped. I plugged in a PS/2 keboard and got it to boot from CD - installed everything and its running well. Found out I only have 384 MB of RAM, so I just bought 2 256MB sticks to replace the 64MB ones. Rambus is freaking expensive- hopefully the ones I got off ebay for $30 will work ok. Anywho- thanks

tstroud · Answer

Hi yes Rdram is expensive, when buying from Ebay make sure that the seller has a good feedback rating and also that you can return the ram if it does have problems, most people on there are honest, glad to have helped, have a great day   Terry

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Trouble with BIOS after replacing Hard Drive

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