Drive Error / startup error

[flavor4real2]

Hey guys,
I have this Dell Dimension L500r, which is a P3,500Mhz system. Somehow someone was able to put Windows XP Home on it a time ago (don't know who, but it has a 9GB HD) woow

Now they gave it to me to fix it. Everytime you reboot it stops and asked to insert a floppy in drive A. Well, I disabled and unplugged the floppy drive and set the BIOS where it boots from the CD Drive. Now whatever I set in the BOIS, it always ends up on a blackscreen with the msg "insert disk in A:"

I pressed F2/6/8/10/12, BIOS comes up on "delete" but thats all.

Now my question, is there any hope for this system or can I tell the girl to scrap this old system?

 

[G0AOZ]

Are you repairing this for love or money? If it has very important data on it, then I suggest taking out the HDD and try attaching it to another working XP system. Beware of any possible virus threats etc., from this disk before you copy or open any documents etc.

Check to see if the disk is recognised in the BIOS, or indeed if it is actually spinning. If it's running, you might be able to carry out a repair on it having booted up with the XP CD.

Data aside, from a commercial point of view this machine is obsolete and it's not worth spending time and money on it...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[flavor4real2]

The BIOS don't recognize any HD I put in. I can set Auto, IDE Removable and stll not. I can't tell if its spinning cause the PS/ fan is so loud, it does vibrate but that can from other sources.

However i set the bootorder, or even when i uninstall the floppy it always comes to this msg screen where it ask for a disk in drive A.

Well, it's ok. i just tell her that there is no way to fix this problem .... thanks

 

[wahnula]

Many old systems will not boot if there is no floppy drive.

I would connect the data drive to another machine and image it immediately to another drive or partition.

Does BIOS see the CD drive? If not the HDD cable could be bad. Set BIOS to "optimum Default" settings.

Tony