Dimension 2350

Home Windows XP SP1

 

a.  Initially my boot problems were sporatic (~60% of the time it would boot normally).  Upon using (Ctl+Alt+Del), it would reboot itself okay.

 

b.  Finally, on start-up it would always go to the blue DELL banner on a black background with the F2 or F12 key choices.

 

c. Eventually, the last message line I always got was: "No boot device detected, insert System disk.....F1 to continue or press F2......"

 

d.  Coincidentally or not, I noticed my upper CD drive green activity light was not coming on during boot cycle. (bottom CD drive and floppy drive lights worked okay)

 

e.  I opened tower and disconnected power and data cable from defective? upper CD drive.

 

 f.  The only way I can not get it to boot now is to: start computer, place Windows XP disk in lower drive,  (press Ctl+Alt+Del) , Press F12 when Dell logo appears, use arrow keys to select "IDE CD-ROM", when "press any key to boot appears" I don't press anything and after a few moments it will boot okay.

 

What can I do to correct this problem?  Will System Restore buy me anything?  Help!!!!

 

Thanks for the 2 responses, but I probably need to rephrase my problem/symptoms before I can be helped.

 

1. I can now (after running thru the items listed above) only boot from my  remaining working CD/RW drive using the operating sytem (XP) disk that came with my computer (see item f. above).

 

2. My upper CD (read only I think) is dead and has had both power and data lines disconnected.

 

3.  I thought my inability to boot upon start-up was because that CD drive was dead (indicator light didn't flash when computer is turned on at start-up like it normally does when each drive is checked on start-up). 

 

4. Since I can boot from the Operating System CD now, is there anything I can do once the computer is up and running in XP to fix my problem, ie. System Restore, XP diagnostics, ???