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Inspiron 531 HD failed. How to restore.
I have been asked to help a friend fix an Inspiron 531 that had a total and unrecoverable HD failure.
I have installed a new drive (raw), but when I try to boot the machine from the "Reinstallation CD," nothing happens. When I try to enter the BIOS setup in order to select the DVD as the boot drive, I get a password request. The owner insists that she has not implemented password protection for the BIOS.
Unfortunately, the system is out of warranty, or I would call Dell.
Any suggestions?
RobinBredin
4 Operator
4 Operator
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August 20th, 2009 14:00
Hi, Can you remove your service tag, it's against dell TOS. Have you tried to press F12, then select DVD drive to boot off the CD.
iconomat
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August 20th, 2009 20:00
Removed tag. sorry.
if I hit F12, I get what appears to be a boot menu, with SATA 0 through SATA 4 listed but no way to choose among them. (Neither arrows nor mouse have any effect, nor is there any indication that one item is selected.) SATA 1 = TSSTcorp DVD+/- TS-H653A D500. The others = None.
Below this is the following message: "Diskette drive 0 seek failure."
Along the bottom, I am offered a choice between F1 to retry booting and F2 for setup utility. Hitting either brings up the Enter Password box.
The last line reads 06/15/2007-1.0.3