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Urgent Help needed on Dell Optiplex 980 Booting Issue
Hello All!
I just got a new Dell Optiplex 980 in my office. It did not come with any operating system installed so i installed Windows 7 32-bit on it. It worked perfectly fine until i accidentally run some executables (i can try to remember and give the exact names if that is important) from the Resource CD (containing the diagnostic utility and drivers) which was shipped with the system in an attempt to install the NIC drivers for the specified system. But it turned it into a mess. Now i am facing two problems:
1-I cannot boot the OS with the hard disk as it goes directly to some kind of DOS with the command prompt. The directory in the C:\ only shows a Temp folder. The other drive is X:\ (named BOOT or something like that).
2-When i try to boot the system with the windows 7 disc and try to install a fresh copy of windows, the system cannot locate the hard drive partitions and prompts me to specify the driver location of the disk drives.
Hard disk is detected in BIOS and its model/id is WD-WMAV2DX55747. I have run diagnostic test on the hard disk and it tells me that its fine (i.e. no errors etc). Please suggest some solution for installing a fresh windows on it or restoring the system to factory defaults. I'll highly appreciate any help in this regard. Thank you!
Tom Green
322 Posts
1
January 25th, 2011 17:00
Hello Qutab
If you you wish to start over by repartition the hard drive and install Windows you could do so with the install disk.
For user with only windows 7 DVD, follow these steps, as provided by
UkonCornelias:
1. Once windows 7 Setup is loaded, press Shirt + FlO keys at the first setup screen (which aLlows selection of language, keyboard and Locale). A Command Prompt window will be opened.
2. Run Diskpart, the buiLt-in disk partitioning tool of windows 7 with the following command:
diskpart
3. Type in the following command one by one, follow by Enter key to create a partition (text in brackets are comments only):
list disk (to show the id number of the hard disk to partition, normally is Disk 0)
select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)
clean
create partition primary size=80000 (create a partition with 80 GB space: to use entire disk as one partition, omit the "size=value” parameter switch: use simiaar command to create more partition if needed or create in windows 7 after installation)
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
exit
4. Type exit at command prompt to close Command Prompt window.
5. Continue windows 7 installation as usual. Remember to just highLight and select the partition just created when come to partition screen.
Hope this helps.
Tom
qutab
3 Posts
0
January 25th, 2011 21:00
Hello Tom
Thank you for taking the time to help me on this. That worked. I really appreciate your help.
Regards
Qutab