What is happening is the system cannot find your hard drive, the drive has either died or your cmos batter has gone bad and lost the settings in the bios, replace the cmos battery first (labeled Battery Socket in the diagram below), cheap to do, and then reset your nvram described here, http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=41042    then see if it can find the drive again.  Post back

 

 

Read first before opening the PC

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim2400/en/sm_en/rmvcvr.htm

 

 

 

Thanks for the tip. I will get a new battery today and let you know how I get on.

Did you try disc 2?

No success, I'm afraid. I replace battery, and went through the process described in the linked page. I got "Updating ESCD Success"

 

but then the same as in my first post.

 

I think maybe I need to buy new OS software?

What os are you running??? If you are running windows 98 , you need a 3 1/2 windows 98 boot disk to load the setup files., I know when I was using those systems i had to use a windows 98 boot disk to load the setup files, then with the cd windows 98 disk in the drive it would load the system up.

Mombodog: Disk 2 was not recognised as a system disk

 

Robert: The license sticker on the PC says windows XP.

Then why are you using a 98 startup disk?

 

You should Boot from the XP CD.

I would do but I don't have one. All I have is the two Dell Resource CDs.

 

Possible there was an XP disk that is now lost in the mists of time? If so - what can I do?

I will try, as soon as I find a UK support email address on the website....

Request them from Dell

 

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=214841