Unable to boot up

[nickb]

We have an older used Dell computer at work. Following a power outage over the weekend the computer will not boot up. When I try to start up, I press F2 to enter the bios. The computer does not find a primary drive. It is set to auto but apparenty does not find either the hard drive, floppy drive or cd rom. There is power to the cd rom and the tray opens but it will not read a cd.

Any suggestions on how to attempt to boot up the system. We are considering removing the hard drive and installing it in another pc just to see if it still works.

i am hoping that the system was not damaged due to the power outage. It was turned off at the time, but still plugged in.

Would appreaciate any suggestions.

Thanks
Nickb

[John Prophet]

I would pull out any pci cards....modems are sort of famous for being damaged and giving all kinds of weird boot issues just by them still being in the slot but being shorted out.

But it sounds sort of like the motherboard may be out of whack.

You could try resetting the bios altogether.

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you could try unplugging EVERYTHING from the motherboard and power supply...unplug the floppy, the cdrom etc etc...and try the hard drive then...because its possible that one of those components is shorted out.

maybe try different power plug from the power supply to the hard drive, for instance if you know the power is going to the cdrom..pull the power plug from the cdrom and see if the hard drive works then. (you didnt say if you hear the hard drive spinning up or not, if its spinning up then its probably ok and the power supply is probably ok)

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if you do take the hard drive to another pc....make sure you only start in safe mode so that you dont mess up all your registry hardware settings etc.

or just take it to another comp and boot off a boot disk and run fdisk, just to see if the drive is ok.

JP

[nickb]

John

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll try them in the morning when I get to work.

By the way I did order a pc from internetishop as previously detailed in my post from last week. It's scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Should be a good weekend. Looking forward to getting it up and running. I'm going from a P2 300 MHz w/128 M sdram to a P4 3.02 MHz with 512 ddr (400 mhz). I'm excited.

nickb

[sevenal]

good advice JP
I have seen another trick that works sometimes.
This is usually where i start these kinds of things.

Unplug the power cord from the pc,along with any cables other than Video and keyboard and mouse.
Then hold the primary power button in for 15 seconds, this drains of any residual voltage from the motherboard. Reconnect power cord.
Then try to reboot, if it dose boot up (shut down) and connect one
cable at a time
like the printer,
"repeat" speakers
"repeat" Cat 5
lastly the phone , modem. Just be sure not to connect anything with the pc turned on/powered up.
Likely this will produce results 1 time in 20
but if it don't reboot ,shut down and clear the bios like JP said.
And even then i would boot to safe mode.
Just to compare a subsequent regular boot.to rule out any corrupted drivers.
Still a no go?
Then perhaps pull out any pci or isa cards
other than the video card. Then try to boot again. you may have to reload drivers if you do though?
I'm not the pro that a lot of these folks are but i hope it helps.
Also if anyone sees any of these steps as being meritless, be kind but speak your mind.
Im always ready to learn also.
g/l nick and welcome to TECHIMO

[nickb]

thanks sevenal

This additional info will give me plenty of things to try tomorrow (now today0 at work. I appreciate the help.
nickb