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14 Posts
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8244
February 23rd, 2005 13:00
Problems with new HD
Hi everyone,
Just spent the last few frustrating hours of my life trying to install a new HD in my Dimension 4300 - and am no closer to any kind of solution.
The idea is to replace the existing 40GB drive with another as boot/system disk, and use the existing HD as extra space, so I installed the new drive on the end (black) connector of the Cable, disconnected the existing drive completely and put everything back together in order to install WinXP.
Ran through the setup disk provided by Western Digital first and that seemed to work OK, and it detected the correct size of the drive and everything. However, having done all that, it could not boot from the WinXP CD! All I got was two error messages ...
The first, and most regular, was
NTLDR missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
The second was
Cannot boot from CD. Code :2
Before each attempt to run setup, I checked the BIOS setup to ensure that it was trying to boot from the CD and not the HD first.
Spent quite a while on the telephone with Dell's tech support running through various options, take off the cables, put them back on, check they are connected correctly, all of that stuff, but no change. The outcome was that the Dell technician pronounced the new HD a dud, and suggested I get it replaced.
On speaking to WD's tech support, however, they said that the "NTLDR missing" message made no sense, as this is a file that XP checks when attempting to boot and which, naturally, would not yet be on the HD! They pronounced that the problem lay with the Dell supplied WinXP installation CD, but did also suggest that it may work if the jumpers on the WD drive are set to Master and the Dell drive to Slave, rather than both using Cable Select.
I have re-connected the original HD and everything is still working fine, so there is no problem with the power supply, or the cables.
Am I missing something here - is there something I may not have done/done properly that could be causing this situation?
Plus, the jumpers on the Dell drive are not set the same as the WD one (which comes with Cable Select as default). Do HD jumpers have a standard configuration, or is it different from one manufacturer to another? (Not that this will make any difference when the drive is not even connected, of course).
Any thought/ideas would be greatly appreciated at this point.
Cheers,
Just spent the last few frustrating hours of my life trying to install a new HD in my Dimension 4300 - and am no closer to any kind of solution.
The idea is to replace the existing 40GB drive with another as boot/system disk, and use the existing HD as extra space, so I installed the new drive on the end (black) connector of the Cable, disconnected the existing drive completely and put everything back together in order to install WinXP.
Ran through the setup disk provided by Western Digital first and that seemed to work OK, and it detected the correct size of the drive and everything. However, having done all that, it could not boot from the WinXP CD! All I got was two error messages ...
The first, and most regular, was
NTLDR missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
The second was
Cannot boot from CD. Code :2
Before each attempt to run setup, I checked the BIOS setup to ensure that it was trying to boot from the CD and not the HD first.
Spent quite a while on the telephone with Dell's tech support running through various options, take off the cables, put them back on, check they are connected correctly, all of that stuff, but no change. The outcome was that the Dell technician pronounced the new HD a dud, and suggested I get it replaced.
On speaking to WD's tech support, however, they said that the "NTLDR missing" message made no sense, as this is a file that XP checks when attempting to boot and which, naturally, would not yet be on the HD! They pronounced that the problem lay with the Dell supplied WinXP installation CD, but did also suggest that it may work if the jumpers on the WD drive are set to Master and the Dell drive to Slave, rather than both using Cable Select.
I have re-connected the original HD and everything is still working fine, so there is no problem with the power supply, or the cables.
Am I missing something here - is there something I may not have done/done properly that could be causing this situation?
Plus, the jumpers on the Dell drive are not set the same as the WD one (which comes with Cable Select as default). Do HD jumpers have a standard configuration, or is it different from one manufacturer to another? (Not that this will make any difference when the drive is not even connected, of course).
Any thought/ideas would be greatly appreciated at this point.
Cheers,
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talmy
1K Posts
0
February 23rd, 2005 16:00
Also, you shouldn't need to use the WD software and it should all work with Cable Select for both drives (at least it always has for me). All my Dells came with the drive set at CS.
tfkm
14 Posts
0
February 23rd, 2005 18:00
My first instinct was as you describe it, that the PC is unable to boot from the CD, and is therefore looking to the HD which of course is blank. Having re-connected the old HD, everything is working fine, as I say, and I put the CD in to check that it could be read, which it can, and NTLDR is in the i386 folder, exactly where it should be. It also autoruns without problem.
All that remains now is to try booting from the CD with the old HD in ... I guess if it boots from the CD it will start setup and warn me that I already have XP installed, whereas if it can't the system will just start normally.
Anyone know whether Dell will replace their OEM supplied XP installation disks if they turn out to be a dud - I have used it on occasion for repairing bits and pieces, but I have never had to boot with it, so it could have been dud from day 1.
shesagordie
10 Elder
•
46K Posts
0
February 23rd, 2005 20:00
tfkm.
The following thread should help you regarding the replacement of mising and defective Dell CDs.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_other&message.id=223336
Bev.
TomXPS
1.3K Posts
0
February 23rd, 2005 21:00
Make sure you have your BIOS set to read the CD first on boot up order. I think that is the problem it sees the HD and does not continue on to try the CD.
Lemmi
238 Posts
0
February 24th, 2005 21:00
tfkm,
If everything is ok with the old HD alone - why don't you try to make the new one your second HD?
Leave operating system and programs on the original HD, move My Documents and any other files you created to the second one.
If this doesn't work, then the new HD is bad.
Lemmi
tfkm
14 Posts
0
February 25th, 2005 12:00
Finally got it working properly and the new HD is setup as system, with the old one now used as document storage etc, exactly as planned. Without every really sussing out what the problem was - except that it definitely had something to do with the boot from CD.
After a number of unseccessful attempts, I went back to Dell tech support, and a second guy agreed that it sounded more like a problem with the CD than the HD. We booted to the Dell Resource CD, just to get a DOS prompt so I could check that it could read the new HD, which it could.
Then attempted to boot from the XP CD again, and this time it worked perfectly. We didn't change anything, so go figure!
TomXPS
1.3K Posts
0
February 25th, 2005 17:00
If you have a CD burner you may want to make a copy of your OS CD. Maybe you got a bad CD a CD copy may work better. For the $0.20 that a blank CD cost I usually backup all the software CD I get and use the backups just to be safe.