No Operating System Found

[shadow82]

Hi there,
I was asked to try and fix a laptop for my Dad. When booting it up it goes through the Blue Dell screen and into a black screen which says the following:

EZ-BIOS: Initializing...
EZ-BIOS: Not controlling any drives. Unloading...
EZ-BIOS: Continuing Startup...

No Operating System_

It does the same when i start the computer up with a windows boot disk. I held down F2 during the blue dell screen and noticed that the only boot device is the internal HD, floppy and CD were disabled. I was unable to change these to enable. I also noticed that there was an Admin Password enabled. (Maybe this is why I cant enable secondary boot drives) No one knows this password. Cust. service was called in the past and they stated it is a problem with security chips on the motherboard? (something like that) and that a new motherboard is required. (they are charging something like $600 to install a new one) Obviously I am not going this route on this older laptop but I am willing to open the case at this point if there is something I can try there. Any help is appreciated
Thanks

 

[shadow82]

If there is any other info which would help let me know and i will try to get it

 

[Bozo Galora]

I know nothing about "security chips" for Dells, but since no one answered, heres a few thoughts.

My first try at making the laptop whole again is to take off cover and see if its possible to get to hard drive to replace it.
One could first try Dell lap HDD it in another PC to see if it boots there (in safe mode?) as i'm guessing laptop HDD are also 12V.
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/directron/20gb30gb.html

I am unclear..... if there is no O/S seen, how you can tell if theres an administrative pw?
There are BIOS pw, that can be cracked by little proggies on the internet
Admin pw can also be changed by using a min Linux bootable Cd of say Austrumi (50mb), but if you cant boot to CD or Floppy, thats bad news. Maybe you cant change boot order because HDD is toast.

Of course Dell has all proprietary drivers, so you would have to hope the drivers on Dell CD (that you have??) and XP could get everything configured after new HDD

Might also want to check voltages in 12V molex with VOM

Edit: Might want to see if theres a cmos shorting jumper on mobo and use it to reset bios.

 

[bacillus]

if the bios doesn't see the hdd then try removing then reinstalling the hdd as a bad contact can cause this problem.

 

[shadow82]

I will look into those suggestions... I can tell there is an ADMIN PW on because when I am in the BIOS there is one enabled. Would maybe removing the CMOS battery reset this? Also if I were to get a new HD for the laptop and install a store bought copy of XP...would that work... Or does it have to be from DELL even if I get a new HD?