Dell Desktop Support

[dersta]

Hi Guys,

I will be ordering my new pc very soon but I was wondering if anyone can give me any new ideas to try and get my old one up and running until my new one arrives?

Here is what caused my pc to stop functioning properly:-

Dell Dimension 9200 - 5 years old approx
Running Vista Home Premium

Because of my impatience I stupidly got tired of waiting for the pc to reboot after/during a recent windows update, so I turned it off and went to bed before it had time to reboot and complete the install etc...
The day after I turned it on and saw the problem, after the initial Dell boot up screen all I saw was a blank black screen with a flashing _ at the top left hand corner of the screen.
This didn't change at all so I did the usual stuff like ctrl-alt-delete to restart the pc, the same boot up sequence happened a few times but then I pressed on F2 to go into setup as F12 did nothing at all nor did any other F key.
I was able to get into the bios screen but not into safe mode.
I reset the boot up sequence so that it would boot up from the dvd-rom drive with the original windows vista disc in the drive, so I rebooted but got the same flashing _ screen over and over again.

I tried various sequences to try and get it to boot up with windows but with no success.
I tried disconnecting the raid 0 set hard drives one at a time to see if that made a difference but it didnt. I also tried the dvd-rom drive connector lead in another location but that did nothing as well.

My conclusion is that there must be a fault with the motherboard because the system is not recognising the hard drives to boot up windows nor the dvd-rom drive to boot up windows from the disc.

I should also mention that I cannot access system restore or even get up the command prompt window.

I have read a lot of forums on different sites but cannot find an answer to get the pc to boot up and load windows.

If anyone has any ideas that I could try I would be very greatful.

Cheers!

Dersta

 

[Rakk]

My conclusion is that there must be a fault with the motherboard because the system is not recognising the hard drives to boot up windows nor the dvd-rom drive to boot up windows from the disc.

Given that the problems started when you stopped it in the middle of a Windows update but it was working before it seems quite unlikely the motherboard is at fault.

The flashing _ does seem to suggest it can't boot off the hard drives, the problem could be exacerbated by the fact your drives are raided, and the stopping the update in the middle may have totally screwed Windows (there is a reason it says 'do not turn off your computer' ). At this point I suspect a Windows reinstall/repair is very much needed.

As for it not seeing the DVD drive, when was the last time you used the DVD drive, did it work beforehand?

 

[baron75mk2]

Yes , i would also be looking at windows , i have had the same thing with an alienware (also made by dell) , just a small flashing line at the top of screen , my alienware would also say "missing operating system" , but i guess yours just gives you the flashing line , basically it means that the boot / mft has been corrupted , you could try to put your windows disk in & chose repair my computer , but good luck with this as i have never known it to work properly , i have done it a few times my self due to lots of reasons , one of them being the same as yourself - a windows update that just took ages (left it for two hours before i got fed up with waiting) & the same thing happened - only way i got out of it was to re-install my windows from my back up image , so not to bad as it was a full pc back up.

Try to re-install windows from your disk & see what happens ( although this could be a problem if you cant get the pc to recognise a dvd/cd drive , cant really explane that one - have you got an actual boot up overide screen ? most pcs have them so you dont have to keep going in the bios on my alienware it was F12 but they are all different i suppose , might be worth trying it this way ?)

 

[Rakk]

i have had the same thing with an alienware (also made by dell) , just a small flashing line at the top of screen , my alienware would also say "missing operating system" , but i guess yours just gives you the flashing line

Yep, mine does the flashing line if theres nothing to boot from I guess some give useful messages, some dont
I found it out last year when replacing a harddrive, and my BIOS in its infinite wisdom had decided that my external USB hard drive was what it was going to try to boot from - funnily enough it failed

 

[baron75mk2]

Yep, mine does the flashing line if theres nothing to boot from I guess some give useful messages, some dont
I found it out last year when replacing a harddrive, and my BIOS in its infinite wisdom had decided that my external USB hard drive was what it was going to try to boot from - funnily enough it failed

it is strange the dvd/cd drive not being detected , would it be possible to try an external usb dvd drive just to load up & re-install windows ? , i only ask as my freind had a dell & the drive didnt last long in it at all (didnt in my alienware either) - this way he / she could eliminate a possible RAID issue that is stopping the cd/dvd drive from being present - i had a similar thing the first time i did a raid set up , i got one step wrong somewhere & the same thing happened to me ( dont know where i went wrong unfortunately as it was so long ago - i just stick to normal HDD setups nowadays)

But could it be worth a try if he/she has an external cd drive hanging around or maybe could borrow one temporarily ?

 

[dersta]

I did try to get my pc to boot from and external USB device but that did not work for me either.

It did not recognise any installed hardware I don't think not even dvd-rom drives or hard drives.

I just hope that I will be able to recover the data from the two raid drives in my old pc and transfer it to my new pc when it arrives.

I have done this with my older Windows XP Dell pc but it would only let me transfer the data to another pc or laptop running XP, so my pc running Vista would not be suitable.

Does anyone know if I transfer the data from a hard drives that were running vista if they can be retrieved to a new pc running windows 7, via a hard drive caddy connected by usb?

Cheers!

Dersta