Evil Genius

My friend gave me a Dell optiplex GX1P and asked me to reinstall windows 2000 pro on it. Ive tried using boot disks and have tried making bootable floppies and cd to try to reinstall the OS but it never seems to boot from either and goes straight to the hard drive.

I've changed the bios settings and everything and i still got nada. The funny thing is that my friend gave it to guy who installed windows xp on it an few months ago, and now its almost grounded his sytem to a halt. Hence why he asked me to reinstall windows 2000 back on it.

Anyone got a clue whats the deal here or am i just crap out of luk !!!
Thanks in advance for any help or advice that you got for me, much appreciated !!!

batty_professor

Did you remember to "save" and exit after changing bios settings? If you don't use the save option when exiting, the bios reverts to the previous.

Squashman

Many bios's will prompt you to Press a Key to boot from CD? Are you using a Genuine copy of Windows or a burned copy.

Evil Genius

Although there appears to be no selection to "save settings" in the bios...when i exit the bios i believe it saves the settings automatically, cause on subsequent reboot and re-entry into the bios the options remained at what i had set them too initally.

Yes i am using an original copy of win 2k pro and a backup "burned disk" of the same disk. Ive even tried making boot disk floppies and tried installing it that way with no luck. Ive also tried these particular disks on other machines and they boot up without a problem, go figure.I believe that when windows boots from the CD it asks you to press any key to boot from cd...but i dont get this message at all. I also dont belive that there is any particular key sequence that needs to be pressed in order to force a cd boot, other than selecting it within the bios....but i could be wrong.

Thanks for the reply....please if you have any further suggestions please post a reply

Thanks alot....Much appreciated

batty_professor

Is the "floppy seek at boot" enabled? And how 'bout both the ide channels? Are the drives physically unplugged? Watch the bios report as the unit boots. You should see the CD Rom, Hard drive, Floppy etc listed, and reported as installed I'd expect. You may need to disable "quick boot" in the bios to get all this. And that should be a Phoenix bios if I'm not mistaken. Also shown in the bios at the bottom of page 1 should be the "service Tag" number. Could you post it?

crazijoe

Sounds as if you have a bad optical drive.

Evil Genius

i dont think i have a bad optical drive. The comp has a cd-rom and a cd-rw drive and ive tried both along with the floppy drive with no luck.
heres a break down of my bios settings maybe i got something set wrong:
Thanks for any advice or help that anyone can provide, much appreciated.

----BIOS----
Page 1

Dell Computer Corporation
System Optiplex GX1 600 MTbr+ Setup -------Bios version A08
Diskette Drive A: 3.5 inch, 1.44 MB
Diskette Drive B: Not Installed
Use Zip as A or B: off

--Drives--
Primary Type Cyls Hds Pre LZ SEC Size
Drive 0: Auto Eide Drive 13676
Drive 1: None

--Secondary--
Drive 0: None.....................................Pentium III Processor CPUID:673
Drive 1: None.....................................Level 2 Cache: 512 Kb Integrated
Reserved Memory : None......................System Memory: 256 MB SDRAM
CPU Speed: Compatible........................Video Memory: 8 MB SGRAM
Num Lock: ON....................................Service Tag : H31MA
Chasis Intrusion : Enabled-Silent
DAC Snoope: off
ACPI: ON

----PAGE 2----
Keyboard errors: Do not Report
System Password: Not Enabled
Password Status: Unlocked
Boot Sequence: Diskette First
Setup Password: Not Enabled
Auto Power On: Disabled 23:00
Power Management: Disabled
Wakeup on LAN: off

---Integrated Devices---
Sound: ON
NIC: ON
Mouse: ON
Serial Port 1: Auto
Serial Port 2: Auto
Parallel Port: 378h
Paralled Mode: ps/2
IDE Hard Drive: Auto
Diskette: Auto
Speaker: ON
CPU Serial #: ON

batty_professor

One of your optical drives should be listed where it says "drive 1" The other should appear in "secondary" Since the bios isn't seeing either of them, it will not seek to boot from them. I'd also assume the floppy has a problem where it just doesn't read, probably age or dust. The optical drives may just not be configured correctly (ie. the master/slave jumpers, maybe try putting one on secondary alone as master, the other as slave on the cable with the HDD. May need to use the C/S setting.

Midnight Tech

Y'know Evil Genius and batty_professor, I've seen some of these Dell machines act REAL weird when chassis intrusion is turned on...try setting it to disabled and see if it makes a difference.