E521 boot problem

Question

I have just reloaded my neighbours machine back to XP as she didn't like the Vista upgrade she bought.   Sounds simple, but it was anything but......   The BIOS refused to see the dvd drive as a bootable device. I ended up taking the ide dvd-rw out of my machine and attaching it with an ide>usb convertor that I had on hand. Even that was problomatic. A number of times I got the ntldr missing error and the couple of times it did start it got to 98% or 96% copying the files to the hdd when it failed. After 2 frustrating hours (and back to the original dvd drive I tried apart from 2 others from different machines) I finally got the copy over to complete and XP installed as normal.   She is now happy-ish.   My questions though are:-   1. How would a novice (which she is) be able to do a reload should it be required? She had spoken to the 'help desk' and after much trial and error they decided that her original reinstallation cd was faulty so sent her another one. I reinstalled from the original, it was the fact that it would not boot that was the problem......   2. The usb mouse works most of the time but frequently doesn't on boot. Changing to any other usb port makes no difference.   3. Her printer (bought with the system) doesn't work - in fairness I have to check this out as I was out of time due to the reinstall problems., but the help desk had failed to rectify this when she did the upgrade to Vista, so maybe it is a problem, I will check this weekend.   She seems to have had a raw deal.   Did I miss something in doing the reinstall?   Any thoughts welcome.   Regards   Chris

ManyDimensions · Answer

Chris   I don't see where you did anything wrong and I might add that your efforts went well above normal.   It appears to me that you were facing many problems, not just one. After the new operating system is installed it is important to load the chipset drivers, then the peripheral drivers from the Dell support site.   You will likely need to use a different computer to accomplish this task so I suggest that you get all the drivers that you think you may need and pack them on to a writable CD.   It is imperative to install the chipset driver first, then the LAN driver, then the AUDIO driver. Once the chipset driver is installed the USB ports should function once again.

TheBrit · Answer

Thanks for the repy.

Seems my post was moved as I originally posted in BIOS as that is where I believe the main problem lies ie the dvd drive is not seen as a bootable device.

After doing the reinstall and all the XP updates, av install, works install etc I took an image backup to a bootable dvd using Acronis.

It doesn't help that much as the machine still does not recognise the dvd drive as a boot option so I will have to resort to plugging my dvd in via usb if it gets totally borked, but at least it will save me a heap of time.....

I'm hoping that the upcoming BIOS upgrade will rectify this problem....

I'll play around tomorrow re the printer/mouse issues and see what happens.

At least she is up and running.

Message Edited by TheBrit on 07-27-2007 03:12 PM

Locked Topics – Desktops General

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