Reboot the laptop and hold down F2. Chose the Power Management setting and go to the HD. Make sure SATA is enabled. Change it to the factory default of "enabled" if it isn't; exit the Setup, and boot up to see if that will work for you.
I have an Inspiron E1505 with Win XP. I was having some issues and decided to take the laptop back to factory install state. Did the PC Restore sequence. Everything when smoothly until it started to come back up. That's when I got the dreaded, "Loading DMRK Version 8.00" message.
Seems this is common. Honestly, I know things in the computer world don't always go as planned; however, I would think DELL would have done a better job with the PC Restore because it is such a useful feature. As a user, I shouldn't even see something like this - my opinion.
Now that I have vented, it seems that the fix isn't so complicated; however, I don't see what you are describing under the Power Management setting. When I power on the laptop and hold down to display the menu, what I see is this:
- Power Management
Auto On Mode
Auto On Time
USB Wake Support
That's it. So I'm not sure what you mean by "Chose the Power Management setting and go to the HD". I don't see any drives or HD selection at all. So, I don't have a way to "enable" SATA. Perhaps I'm not seeing the forest through the trees. Is it just me? Is something missing?
I've found lots of stuff on the web about using the XP CD and doing a complete re-install of the OS; however, DELL didn't ship an OS CD with this model of laptop, so that's not a solution for me. Anything about getting into the computer after booting up is of course not a solution either because it will not boot up completely. Lots of complicated mumbo - jumbo on SATA and Raid configuration stuff. Your solution seems to be the easiest and most straight forward - I just don't see what you are describing.
Actually, the restore process on your computer seems to have worked just fine. The message you are seeing results from corruption of the program in partition 1 that leads you through the registration process used when you receive the computer from Dell. The fix is not hard theoretically, but the tools you need to recover make this a bit difficult to get through.
You need to use a partition table editor to change certain bytes in the partition table to set partition 2, which is the NTFS partition containing Windows, to active, and return the bytes for partition 1 to set it inactive. This will cause the code in partition 2 to be booted instead of partition 1 and allow Windows to load.
The details are found in this page by Dan Goodell: How the DSR Partiton Boots. The first three lines of the first graphic shows how the partition table is set up for a normal boot. Notice that only the second partition has the code "80" in the second byte of the first line. This shows that the second partition is "active" and is the partition that should be booted. The second graph shows how the partition table is altered to boot the third partition that contains the restore image. There is no picture of what gets altered to boot the first partition when the third partition has completed the restore, but basically the "80" code gets moved to the second byte of the first line, where as you can see, the first byte of the first line has been changed to "06". To get your computer back to normal you need to make the partition table look like the one shown in the first graph.
In the treatise by Dan Goodell, he explains how to use the partition table editor. If you are interested, the main document is here: Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition.
Whether you decide to make use of the information in Dan's paper or not, you should really have the CDs for your computer. You can request a set here: Dell Replacement CD. If you live outside the U.S., you will need to contact Dell Tech Support and ask them for the CDs. If you never received the CDs with your machine, you should tell them that the CDs were not sent due to the Dell Media Reduction campaign in effect until about 2007.
OMG THANK YOU!!! I have been trying to boot windows 7 on my Dell Optiplex 780 for over a month, no kidding. I have tried everything, or so I thought. System restore point, image restore, bootable bios update, checkdisk, scannow, the list goes on and on and on. One of the lucky times I could actually get through the startup repair loop and into the settings, I simply changed the RAID to Legacy Boot and restarted.......loaded up to the desktop for the first time since it crashed. I can't thank you enough!!!!!!!!
DELL-Jesse L
Moderator
•
17.9K Posts
0
January 5th, 2009 07:00
panicroompro,
Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.
You can try these steps.
Reboot the laptop and hold down F2. Chose the Power Management setting and go to the HD. Make sure SATA is enabled. Change it to the factory default of "enabled" if it isn't; exit the Setup, and boot up to see if that will work for you.
ddcbob
1 Message
0
January 17th, 2010 07:00
Hi
I have an Inspiron E1505 with Win XP. I was having some issues and decided to take the laptop back to factory install state. Did the PC Restore sequence. Everything when smoothly until it started to come back up. That's when I got the dreaded, "Loading DMRK Version 8.00" message.
Seems this is common. Honestly, I know things in the computer world don't always go as planned; however, I would think DELL would have done a better job with the PC Restore because it is such a useful feature. As a user, I shouldn't even see something like this - my opinion.
Now that I have vented, it seems that the fix isn't so complicated; however, I don't see what you are describing under the Power Management setting. When I power on the laptop and hold down to display the menu, what I see is this:
- Power Management
Auto On Mode
Auto On Time
USB Wake Support
That's it. So I'm not sure what you mean by "Chose the Power Management setting and go to the HD". I don't see any drives or HD selection at all. So, I don't have a way to "enable" SATA. Perhaps I'm not seeing the forest through the trees. Is it just me? Is something missing?
I've found lots of stuff on the web about using the XP CD and doing a complete re-install of the OS; however, DELL didn't ship an OS CD with this model of laptop, so that's not a solution for me. Anything about getting into the computer after booting up is of course not a solution either because it will not boot up completely. Lots of complicated mumbo - jumbo on SATA and Raid configuration stuff. Your solution seems to be the easiest and most straight forward - I just don't see what you are describing.
Some help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks - ddcbob
jackshack
6.4K Posts
0
January 17th, 2010 15:00
Actually, the restore process on your computer seems to have worked just fine. The message you are seeing results from corruption of the program in partition 1 that leads you through the registration process used when you receive the computer from Dell. The fix is not hard theoretically, but the tools you need to recover make this a bit difficult to get through.
You need to use a partition table editor to change certain bytes in the partition table to set partition 2, which is the NTFS partition containing Windows, to active, and return the bytes for partition 1 to set it inactive. This will cause the code in partition 2 to be booted instead of partition 1 and allow Windows to load.
The details are found in this page by Dan Goodell: How the DSR Partiton Boots. The first three lines of the first graphic shows how the partition table is set up for a normal boot. Notice that only the second partition has the code "80" in the second byte of the first line. This shows that the second partition is "active" and is the partition that should be booted. The second graph shows how the partition table is altered to boot the third partition that contains the restore image. There is no picture of what gets altered to boot the first partition when the third partition has completed the restore, but basically the "80" code gets moved to the second byte of the first line, where as you can see, the first byte of the first line has been changed to "06". To get your computer back to normal you need to make the partition table look like the one shown in the first graph.
In the treatise by Dan Goodell, he explains how to use the partition table editor. If you are interested, the main document is here: Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition.
Whether you decide to make use of the information in Dan's paper or not, you should really have the CDs for your computer. You can request a set here: Dell Replacement CD. If you live outside the U.S., you will need to contact Dell Tech Support and ask them for the CDs. If you never received the CDs with your machine, you should tell them that the CDs were not sent due to the Dell Media Reduction campaign in effect until about 2007.
GuitarJim
1 Message
0
December 29th, 2019 00:00
OMG THANK YOU!!! I have been trying to boot windows 7 on my Dell Optiplex 780 for over a month, no kidding. I have tried everything, or so I thought. System restore point, image restore, bootable bios update, checkdisk, scannow, the list goes on and on and on. One of the lucky times I could actually get through the startup repair loop and into the settings, I simply changed the RAID to Legacy Boot and restarted.......loaded up to the desktop for the first time since it crashed. I can't thank you enough!!!!!!!!
James