dell dimension 8400

Question

well here I am again with the problem of my system not able to boot. I replaced the memory and the lithium battery. so the two beeps at start up went away but it still goes to the black screen with the white letters saying start windows normally or safe mode or safe mode with networking or good last known configuration. wont boot at all so a few years ago I got a repair disk that i got from a computer company in my town for windows XP Pro. I booted to the disk and it loaded all files and drivers but when it started to load the OS I get an error saying SETUP DID NOT FIND ANY HARD DISK DRIVES IN YOUR COMPUTER SETUP CANNOT CONTINUE TO QUIT SETUP PRESS F3. The boot sequence goes as follows in my BIOS.

on board or usb floppy drive (not present)

on board or usb cd-rom drive

on board SATA hard drive

on board IDE hard drive (not present)

USB device (not present)

I even removed the numbers in from of the not present drives still it wont boot. so does anyone besides me think that my SATA hard drive is dead or can it be saved. Any help on this would be awesome

Thanks Flash

Flash69 · Answer

Thanks for the answer and you are right I probably should upgrade to windows 7. The only thing that doesnt seem right is that I have used this disk in the past and it worked just fine. Just wondering why it wouldnt do that this time. the evaluation version of windows 7 just download it on a disk and boot to it from my computer and it will load the software? Thanks for all of the help you guys have given me about this problem. this forum rocks.

Flash

rdunnill · Answer

If Windows is asking you to start in Safe Mode, it's finding the hard drive. The reason the reinstall disk isn't working is likely that it doesn't have the SATA drivers. At this stage, considering that support for XP is ending in two weeks, you might consider Windows 7, which is much easier to install. You can download an evaluation version that is good to use for 30 days before activation is required.

rdunnill · Answer

I'm not sure about why your disk isn't working, because the hardware seems to be recognizing the hard drive.

As for Windows 7, it's possible to download it and use the image together with the Microsoft flash drive utility to provision a bootable flash drive that can be used for the install.

Philip_Yip · Answer

See here for details:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/windows-7-sp1-iso-download/

Also see Windows Reinstallation Guide/A Clean Install of Windows 7:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/

You may wish to use the drivers here with a Windows 7 64 Bit install:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/driver-sets/dimension-desktops/dimension-8400-windows-7-64-bit/

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dell dimension 8400

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