I have a DELL Inspiron B130 and it will not boot from the hard drive or the CD drive. The Dell splash screen comes up, memory check is OK but then nothing except a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the screen. Is it the CD drive causing problems or the hard drive? When I put in the Windows XP disk it seems to read(for awhile) but then nothing ever comes up on the screen.
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Computer will not boot
- Thread starter clmp
- Start date
The usual troubleshooting steps apply:
Remove all the non-essential pci cards & disks to see if it boots. Try booting the cd drive without other drives connected if you can't boot with just the hard drive connected.
If you still have an issue, I'd see about getting another power supply to try in the unit.
Remove all the non-essential pci cards & disks to see if it boots. Try booting the cd drive without other drives connected if you can't boot with just the hard drive connected.
If you still have an issue, I'd see about getting another power supply to try in the unit.
@maultier - PSU? the thing is getting power...
@clmp - first of all, check the BIOS setting on the BOOT ORDER or if the drives are even getting recognized...
check the JUMPER SETTINGS of the drives, if they are on the same IDE cable, then make sure that one is set to MASTER and the other is set to SLAVE, or set both to CS (Cable Select)...
Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
@clmp - first of all, check the BIOS setting on the BOOT ORDER or if the drives are even getting recognized...
check the JUMPER SETTINGS of the drives, if they are on the same IDE cable, then make sure that one is set to MASTER and the other is set to SLAVE, or set both to CS (Cable Select)...
Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
If it were a matter of the boot order being wrong, then he would have gotten a message "cannot boot" or "system disk or bootable media not found", or something to that effect.
The fact that it reads from the CDROM drive for a minute tells me that perhaps it is at fault. I would do what maultier suggested---try unplugging the CDROM drive altogether and see if it boots to the hard drive. Also, see what is being recognized and what is not being recognized in BIOS.
Burt
The fact that it reads from the CDROM drive for a minute tells me that perhaps it is at fault. I would do what maultier suggested---try unplugging the CDROM drive altogether and see if it boots to the hard drive. Also, see what is being recognized and what is not being recognized in BIOS.
Burt
- Thread starter
- #5
I have reseated the memory and the hard drive. The easy things to do on a notebook computer. I also ran the Pre-boot diagnostics (PSA Diagnostics) that DELL offers and everything check out OK. I guess I'm just going to have to open it up and reseat some cables. By the way, I changed the boot order to boot from the hard drive first and not even look at the CD drive until later, but nothing changed. Same old thing, blinking cursor in top left of a blank screen. Any other suggestions?
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