clean reinstall of Windows XP on Dell Dimension 4600

thommy65,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum,

You will need to put the Windows XP Reinstallation cd in the cdrom drive and not the Dell Resource cd.

tommy65,

Go back into the system bios to the boot screen. Do not disable anything. Make CDROM the First Boot Device. Save Changes and Exit with xp cd in the drive.

Yes, I have put the brown colored CD in the Cd Rom Drive that has Operating System, Reinstallation CD. Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Including Service Pack 1a. I may have misspoke calling it a Resource CD.

Thanx fro the Reply.

It still won't read the CD ROM Drive. I even tried to setup with the A: Drive and CD Rom Drive, but then I got the choice of F1 to reboot and F2 for setup. When I hit F1 to reboot it would read that drive. I had no other choice than to reset the BIOS back to what it was. It doesn't seem to read that CD ROM Drive. Could there be a bug preventing this?

How many optical drives do you have?  The Dimension 4600 uses IDE/ATA for these drives and will only boot from the master drive.  If you have two, try the second drive.

If that still doesn't work, open the case and see which drive is connected to the last connector on the ribbon cable; try that drive.

If it still doesn't work, go to system setup and set the secondary IDE drive 0 to OFF and try the slave drive (the drive connected to the middle connector on the IDE ribbon cable).

If that doesn't work, go back to system setup, set the secondary IDE drive 0 to ON or Auto (whichever you have), set the secondary IDE drive 1 to OFF, and turn the computer off.  Unplug the power and data cables from the slave drive.  Try booting from the drive that you left on the end connector of the IDE ribbon.

If that doesn't work, unplug the ribbon from that drive and plug it into your second drive (don't forget to plug in the power) and try that.

One of those approaches should work unless the drives themselves are having problems.

Hello Jackshack.

I to am trying to do a fresh install on a Dell Dimension 4600 and I am having the same issue. I have tried all of your advise above including trying a known drive from another computer I have.

I have tried multiple disks, a new ribbon cable, clearing it by removing the battery,  and every Bios setting I could find.

Do you or anyone else have any sugestions? I am using a USB keyboard which is all I have, but if that were the issue would it not work in the BIos? It works fine in the Bios screens.

I would be grateful for any help I could get.  Thanks, Jason

jrspinboy;

I have no reason for this, but I have noticed over the years that some DVD/CD combination drives have trouble booting from a CD.  I left the CD ROM drive in my Dimension 2400 for that specific reason.

You must be able to boot from the Windows installation disk in order to perform a proper installation.  If setting the DVD/CD drive to be first in the boot order, or selecting it as the boot device from the F12 boot menu fails to work, you might still be able to execute setup on the installation disk by booting from the floppy drive.  Microsoft has a way to build a set of start-up floppy disks for Windows XP for use on computers that refuse to boot from the CD.  Check this out:  Windows XP Floppy Start-up Disks.  Just one catch, of course; you must have a diskette drive in the computer to use this procedure.

Incidentally, have you used F2 (system setup) to examine the status of the IDE channel that has the DVD/CD drive connected to it?  It must be set to Auto or On, whichever setting is available.  If it has somehow been turned off you won't be able to boot from a CD in that drive.

Maybe CD ROM can't read your CD as its damaged. Clean it and insert in into your CD ROM and test it again. Does your CD ROM work true or you have problem with it when your windows was true?

Hello everyone, I'm back. I received several replies on my problem and would like to clear this up. No matter what I did, the system would not recognize the cd-rom drive. After taking a few suggestions from the Dell Forum monitors, I realized that my issue was somewhat strange. Their last suggestion was to unplug the ribbon cables and change master and slave drives. I was marking the connections and unplugged the cd rom cable and re-connected it before loading the Dell Resource disk. Hence , I discovered  that before the  re-boot that the system was finally recognizing "new hardware found" in my cd-rom connection. Go figure. I was using this cd-rom for some time with no problems.

Worked for me. Same problem. Got it to boot from CD by unplugging CD drive 0 (samsung) and moving ribbon end connector to the other CD (NEC).

Left the original CD drive disconnected. Bios complained of missing drive. Used setup to make it the only CD. Now boots from CD OK.

Dell 4600. XP Home. Thanks all.