Inspiron 5100 won't boot after WinXP Home reinstall

[Merilintu]

Hello,

I have a problem with Dell Inspiron 5100. It is not my laptop, but my step son's and I am not familiar with this model. Since for some time it was running extremely slow, my step son decided to reinstall Windows (XP, Home Edition, from the orginal cd). I do not know 100% it went fine but he says it did and since it is not first time he was doing a windows reinstall, I believe him.

Now the laptop won't boot. The following things happen:

1. I reboot, it performs POST, if I hit F2, BIOS setup comes up and looks ok. However, it has surprisingly few options - it lists for example a HDD 40 GB as enabled (which is correct) but I can nowhere see the dvd/cd information... I am used to more info in BIOS setup, but ok, as I said, I do not now the Inspiron.

2. Out of BIOS. It says that secondary "HDD 0" was not found and goes directly into the safe mode menu.

3. No matter what I choose, it starts loading some data (names scrolling down the screen) and then a blue screen flashes and it re-boots.

4. I could not catch the full message on the blue screen, it flashes so quickly. I used a photo camera and managed to catch part of the message, it talks about a shut down to prevent system damage and suggests removing any newly installed hard drives.

5. No matter what I setup in BIOS, it will not boot from CD but goes on to HDD. Removing the HDD from the laptop resulted in a message that no booting device is available. I also tried using a Knoppix cd - same thing. The led on the drive flashes but seems the laptop does not see that.

6. Also if I hit F8 in the beginning, among the options for booting device, there is no CD/DVD.

7. The laptop does not have a floppy drive.

8. The Dell in-built diagnosis tool did not find anything except for the problem with real time clock - that the seconds counter does not update correctly (or something like this, I don't have the message copied)

What can I do - what could happen actually? Next week I will have a USB enclosure and will try to access the hard drive via my own PC, but any ideas now?

Thanks a lot...

 

[electronicsfreak]

The scrolling words you see are windows showing you the files its loading for safe mode. Use the system disc to load in recovery console and run scandisck and sfc. See if that helps any. What im guessing happened is when he installed windows xp the cd he was using was scratched and some of the files either didnt get copied or copied bad.

 

[Merilintu]

Thanks - the problem is the laptop does not see the cd drive, as I said. If I set the booting device as CD (as first) and HDD as the second one, it tries booting from HDD directly (which does not work). When I removed the HDD physically, leaving the CD ROM as only booting device, it said there was no booting device available at all.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Ah ok my bad, overead that part. Sorry about that. Only thing I can think of is maybe it came undone inside or quit working. Not much help I know, sorry.

 

[xwb]

Does the laptop say something like

Press <F2> for setup, <F12> to enter boot menu

If it doesn't you need to download a flash patch from Dell. Try

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx...subcat=sup:dyd&usf=&ddate=False&rfe=false&p=3

I think it is up to A22 now.

On startup hold down F12 and then select CD from the menu. This will not work if the laptop cannot see the CD. If it is one of those detachable ones like I have it is a right pain but it may pick it up after a few attempts.