So you think you have seen everything, read this, and help if you can!

[ZTEKNOLOGIES]

Ok so here it is, every once in a while i come across these situtations, never one to give up i try to solve every one of them

first and foremost for this tek issue we are working with a
Dell Optiplex 170L
3.0 ghz
1 gb ram
primary sata drive (not used)
DVD ROM
IDE drives (1)

sounds healthy right, here is what is going on

I want to use this pc as a replacement for a pc i am retiring, not one to do it all over again i thought i could find an effecient way to get the data to this machine, of course thats where the fun starts

FIRST OFF the error "Diskette drive 0 seek failure" comes up on post, it doesnt stop me from doing anything, i just have to wait a few minutes before hitting f1 to continue

WINDOWS 7 WILL NOT LOAD ( i tried 4 or 5 images, what essentially happens is the pc boots, shows the error, then the windows 7 disc starts to lad, it will allow me to get to various points in the process, the furthest i got was the screen that says copying windows files, the errors are all different but the last one said "cannot find installion files" so either MS is shipping BAD copys of 7 or its the pc.

So i gave up and decided to just copy or clone my SATA drive in teh old pc to a new one and reboot, well that didnt work either, i have tried to make images or clones using paragon, norton ghost, and driveclone pro by farstone, all good programs but like i said i think this pc is the devil or something

using paragon i can make an iamge but when i try to boot in the new pc i get a screen with a blinking cursor and it goes no further

using norton i even get to see the XP splash screen come up before it starts to reboot again, it does this over and over even if i try safe mode

Using driveclone which is supposed to support bare metal restore it freezes always after 3:30 seconds while restoring an image

is this pc ready for the junk pile, what am i missing

I should mention it DID let me install a fresh copy of XP to the pc, no issues there, not that thats worth anything without all the settings from the old pc

I have set a date to toss this thing into a dumpster, please let me know if we should try other solutions before doing so!

thanks

 

[rclarke250]

well the error "Diskette drive 0 seek failure" comes up on post,means you need to go into the bios and disable the floppy drive. Otherwise the dell will seek it every time you boot even if there isn't one installed. If the SATA drive isn't being used, disconnect the cables to it. have your boot order as cdrom,ide hdd and disable other boot devices. Boot the windows 7 disk, format the ide drive as ntfs,choose the long format, this will mark any bad sectors. if it still fails to load windows 7, test the memory with memtest86, or memtest86+. If it loads ok, then if you want to hook up the sata drive, go ahead. also some older systems, shared the sata with the first ide and you couldn't run both, you had to choose to use either, but not both.

 

[ZTEKNOLOGIES]

thanks for the info

Ill get rid of the floppy error, but please know the rest has been tried, its not memory since XP loaded fresh, as for the sata drive there is not one hooked up, it has the option but primary is IDE only right now

My question is why are the iamges or "clones" failing, thats the real issue im thinking

FYI the clones are being put on drives the same GB size as the one currently in the pc, which wouldnt matter anyway since the drives can be dif sizes. but we are thinking and thats a start

 

[edfair]

I am a firm believer in doing the memory tests. I've seen my share of issues where memory has affected one OS and not another. Not many, not often, but when it happens you pull your hair out.
Are you possibly at borderline with power? Or any indication of capacitor issues on the motherboard?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[BadBigBen]

When Windows notes that it cannot find the install files, this is an indication that either the DVD is bad or that the DVD-ROM is not functioning correctly (Win7 and 2008R2 tend to loose drivers for certain SATA/IDE controllers)...

so my suggestion would be to replace the DVD, and or change the interface type, e.g. SATA to IDE... or use an USB DVD, for the installing...

another suggestion would be to update the BIOS to the latest version,



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Nelviticus]

Microsoft offer a Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool which lets you make a bootable USB drive from a Windows 7 DVD ISO image. You then use this to install Windows on a machine that doesn't have a working DVD drive.

You can't take a system drive from one machine and boot from it in another unless the two machines have identical hardware, because when Windows boots it'll be trying to load drivers for the CPU, chipset etc. from the original machine. It'll be loading drivers for hardware that's not present while at the same time not loading drivers for hardware that is present.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[goombawaho]

I'm with edfair and BadBigBen for sure - memory test first. Don't do anything else until memory has passed.

Then, the optical drive is under suspicion when trying to load windows directly and there are file not found errors (and/or the DVD itself).

With the images - who knows, that gets more complicated. The easiest way to troubleshoot your problem is to
1. remove the memory from the equation, then
2. swap optical drives to remove that and finally
3. change Windows disks you're using.

If all these fail (in that order), we have to move on to hardware problem - mobo.

 

[ZTEKNOLOGIES]

I will try the steps outlined today in that order, and get back to you, thanks again!

 

[robmazco]

Whats the exact CPU? Thats what Im going with...
And make sure the HD you are sending image too is fully formatted(no boot sector, no backup partition, etc).

 

[ZTEKNOLOGIES]

Just so everyone knows i think i am RE JUNKING this pc, shortly after i got all the drives loaded up (only XP mind you) and ready to load software , it started rebooting for NO REASON and then suddenly couldnt find files like driver.sys or something, it also kept hitting "checkpoint" and repeatedly rebooting, it wouldnt even make it back to safe mode

The Mobo is probably shot!