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Yeungi89

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20 years ago

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Yeungi89

5 Posts

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15014

March 2nd, 2007 05:00

Reformatting Help needed

I need help with reformatting my entire computer. I plan to make it fresh and clean but i seem to have a problem with my procedure. I put in the windows operating cd into my cd drive and restarted my computer, i also put the cd drive in the boot sequence as the first thing. eventually when i try to load the cd, it says an error occured. specfically this is what it says everytime.
        "Windows could not start because of an error in the software.
     please report this problem as Load needed DLLs for kernel."
   I am really confused and need extreme help.
Also i cannot load into my desktop because of this error. Nor can i run safemode.
please help me
       
  • papakal

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    Posted March 2nd, 2007 11:00

    I sure hope someone on this forum can help you because Dell's tech support is truly worthless!!!!
    They don't seem to know anything about reformatting except to take the drive and put it in another machine and reformat it there......
  • GioAguilar

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    Posted March 2nd, 2007 14:00

    Probably not all the techs are so bad, I had luck and the agent helped me with a problem with HDD... But well, What CD are u using to boot to the computer??? What´s the exact model, usually you don´t need to change boot sequence, only press F12 and select to boot from CD, that will make the computer to boot only for that time to CD... If you have two CD ROMs (or DVDs) you need to use the one on the top. Are you able to see the message "PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM THE CD" or immediately you see the error message??? Do you have any other CD that can Boot to it, like Dell Resource CD???
  • nates1705

    1 Rookie

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    Posted March 2nd, 2007 14:00

    The best thing I can think of is to find out who the manufacturer is for the hard drive. Then download the utilities to zero out, or reformat. Like Western Digital has the Data Life Guard Tools, Maxtor has MaxBlast, and Seagate has something (I use it and don't know the name :).
  • Yeungi89

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    Posted March 2nd, 2007 22:00

    the message to"preses any key to boot" is not showing. The error occurs right away which is why Im in a really tight situation. Also i use media center '05.
  • 648

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    Posted March 3rd, 2007 03:00

    Like GioAguilar said, have you tried booting off another known good CD?
  • Yeungi89

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    Posted March 3rd, 2007 05:00

    i tried 2 others. one for xp professional and other the same from a friend. it doesnt work
  • 648

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    Posted March 3rd, 2007 12:00

    Thanks, you need to tell us these things.
     
    Just to rule out software entirely, take out the hard drive, then try booting from the CD. This should eliminate any weird interactions that could be caused by the vista install, and should help us determine whether the issue is software or firmware.
  • Yeungi89

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    Posted March 4th, 2007 01:00

    I removed the HDD and tried rebooting.
    It wont read the stupid disks for some reason.
    It says
    Selected boot device not available
    strike f1 to retry boot, f2 for setup utility.
    very annoying
  • 648

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    Posted March 4th, 2007 12:00

    This is beginning to sound like a problem with the optical drive. Is there another drive you could try with this system?
     
    -It's not software (the HD is out of the system)
    -It's not the disk (you tried 3)
     
    If there's a way you can flash your BIOS, do so, but definitely reset the BIOS defaults for starters (you may have already done so, I havn't read that carefully).
  • Yeungi89

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    Posted March 5th, 2007 03:00

    ok i had someone come over to check out the situation. He said the computer is in really bad shape. It's not something we can just fix with ourselves. The programming is in a bad condition and can only be fixed by the dell technicians at the company.