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Fixing a friend's Dell... UGH!

GoStumpy

GoStumpy

Golden Member
Long story short, friend had tons of viruses (IDK, but he said wipe & reinstall XP), so I opened the computer and cleaned out the dust... Booted fine...

Then I realized the CDROM was pretty much shot, so I replaced it with one I had kicking around. Figured I might as well install a spare HDD I had since the one he has is loud as fug.

Booted BIOS and it didnt detect any drives.. wtf...

Reinstalled old drive, still doesn't detect.

Unstuck & reseated all power plugs and ribbons, to no avail.

DSC00304.jpg


What is going on here???? This thing has the WORST BIOS I have ever seen in my life, but I don't want to spend any money on this thing if I don't have to!

Help!!
 
Can you get into BIOS and set IDE and SATA to Auto Detect, then reboot and go right back into BIOS to see if drives are identified?
 
Given up on it, going to give him a spare P4-2.8GHz with Hyperthreading... Just need to figure out the product Key from the computer I'm putting it into, my Dad bought it new 6-7 years ago, but there's no XP sticker on the case 🙁
 
Agreed, however F2 to enter BIOS gave me a single screen, with no drives visible and no option for auto-detect.

I couldn't believe there is a BIOS without any tabs. Just a little scrolling.

And nothing useful. The CMOS battery was dead, it reset every time I restarted, replaced that and it at least saved the changes I made...but... Still nothing. Garbage heap methinks.

-edit-

Recycling depot of course.
 
GoStumpy said:
Figured I might as well install a spare HDD I had since the one he has is loud as fug.

Booted BIOS and it didnt detect any drives.. wtf...

Reinstalled old drive, still doesn't detect.

Unstuck & reseated all power plugs and ribbons, to no avail.
Click to expand...

You need a HHD... 😎
 
GoStumpy said:
Agreed, however F2 to enter BIOS gave me a single screen, with no drives visible and no option for auto-detect.

I couldn't believe there is a BIOS without any tabs. Just a little scrolling.

And nothing useful. The CMOS battery was dead, it reset every time I restarted, replaced that and it at least saved the changes I made...but... Still nothing. Garbage heap methinks.

-edit-

Recycling depot of course.
Click to expand...



Yup....one of the old, finicky, very few options, Phoenix BIOS. One last troubleshooting suggestion before you go to the "recycling depot":

1] Shutdown, disconnect power cord, wait 30-45 seconds, then disconnect all your drives (HDD's and optical).

2] Verify that each drives jumper positions are set correctly. Jumpers on the wrong pins can look like "no drive installed", especially in these old Phoenix BIOS.

3] Pop the CMOS battery out for 2 minutes, which resets the BIOS to default state.

4] Put the battery back, and with drives still disconnected, reconnect power cord, reboot into BIOS then save and exit, but shutdown before it reboots again.

5] Disconnect power cord, wait 30-45 seconds, reconnect one drive, reconnect power cord, reboot into BIOS and see if that drive is now detected.

6] If it is, do the same procedure for the other drives.

7] When drives are correctly detected, optimize BIOS settings.

8] Install OS.
 
paul878 said:
Dell use CABLE SELECT!
Click to expand...

Hmmm....every IDE HDD I've ever seen, in 20 years, has three basic (some mfgs. provide more) jumper settings: "Master", "Slave", and "Cable Select".

If indeed Dell built this particular machine with the drives jumpered for "Cable Select", and nobody has ever opened that box, then you would be correct. But it would be exceedingly rare that an early 2000's era Dell has never been touched.

Accordingly, I took that into consideration when I posted my suggested troubleshooting steps. To have done otherwise, or make an assumption like yours, would suggest ignorance and inexperience on my part.
 
Last edited:
Don't worry Bubba, some people are better at helping than others, we can accept and move on 🙂

Thank you very much for the detailed process. I will give that a shot before I go any further with this spare computer. I am quite sure that all the HDD's I own (hhd, lol) have the jumpers removed so that it is an 'auto detect'. I'm quite sure the CDROMS and the HDD's have no jumpers. That may be part of the problem.

As well I did remove the CMOS battery, but not for 2+ minutes.
 
My experience as a former field tech:

If you don't have bad motherboard caps then the bios is corrupt and updating it or reflashing will resolve.

Never understood why Dell (or many other oem) systems came out of the factory with the jumper set to cable select. There were multiple bulletins about it over the years (not just Dell either) that if the system was having this exact issue then jumpering correctly master/slave would fix this almost every time. Cable select would cause disappearing drive issue especially with single drives.
 
Bubbaleone said:
Hmmm....every IDE HDD I've ever seen, in 20 years, has three basic (some mfgs. provide more) jumper settings: "Master", "Slave", and "Cable Select".

If indeed Dell built this particular machine with the drives jumpered for "Cable Select", and nobody has ever opened that box, then you would be correct. But it would be exceedingly rare that an early 2000's era Dell has never been touched.

Accordingly, I took that into consideration when I posted my suggested troubleshooting steps. To have done otherwise, or make an assumption like yours, would suggest ignorance and inexperience on my part.
Click to expand...

My wife's last Dell (Dimension 2400?) was also set up with all the jumpers set to "Cable Select." It is (or was) standard on Dell PC's.

It also has a similar BIOS to the one pictured above. IMO, they suck...but from Dell's perspective, they keep end users from mucking around where they don't belong. 😛
 
I'm guessing it's a Dimension 4600 since it has 2 SATA and 2 IDE MB drive connectors. I'm also guessing that the HD and CDROM are IDE. These older Dells have proprietary BIOSes that are not like normal retail motherboards. Dell turns drives OFF in the BIOS when they are not originally configured with them and they do not autodetect in OFF mode.

Make sure all of the drives are set to cable select and make sure the are plugged in correctly on the drive side, i.e. primary drives on the end of the IDE cable, not the middle.

Check the BIOS settings for the drives. Make sure the Primary IDE 0 is set to AUTO and not OFF.
 
If you took off the old "loud as fug" drive and then later placed it back in, and it dont work, then you obviously broke something. Try a different cable maybe. You know how cable select works right?
 
Lanyap said:
I'm guessing it's a Dimension 4600 since it has 2 SATA and 2 IDE MB drive connectors. I'm also guessing that the HD and CDROM are IDE. These older Dells have proprietary BIOSes that are not like normal retail motherboards. Dell turns drives OFF in the BIOS when they are not originally configured with them and they do not autodetect in OFF mode.

Make sure all of the drives are set to cable select and make sure the are plugged in correctly on the drive side, i.e. primary drives on the end of the IDE cable, not the middle.

Check the BIOS settings for the drives. Make sure the Primary IDE 0 is set to AUTO and not OFF.
Click to expand...

You are correct. I had this problem once with an older Dell. Had to go into BIOS and enable the HD port, before it would detect.
 
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