W2k reinstall stalled out

[Odyssey]

I'm trying to reinstall W2k on one of our older office computers (a Dell Optiplex GX200) and am being stonewalled.

The old hdd died and I am trying to replace it with a similar size 10GB Western Digital of similar vintage. It has been formatted to NTFS, but no Windoze as yet.

Have set the BIOS to boot from the CDRom, then the HDD. No matter what CD (W2K, Ubuntu, Rescue, whatever) I put in, I get an error message saying F1 to retry, F2 to setup (BIOS).

Have replaced the CDRom with 2 different alternatives and the same thing is happening. Do not understand where the fail is happening. Is it a BIOS problem, CDROM problem, or what? TIA

[Doctor Snuggles]

Are you sure the old HD was dead?

If I had this in the workshop the first thing I would suspect is the BIOS battery.

If it's losing the parameters of the drive, you may think the drives dead.

Change the battery and make sure the hard drive parameters are correct, use failsafe defaults for rest of settings for time being, tweak later.

Also try removing and replacing the memory.

If you have a floppy drive, try downloading the bootable floppy version of the hard drive diagnostic from the manufacturers website and check drive.

[Gina]

I agree with Dave. Definitely BIOS - battery, mobo fault or BIOS eprom. The system does a POST test before trying things like drives etc. If you're not getting POST it's a fundamental fault with mobo or BIOS. As I recall the test order is something like self test, memory, keyboard, drives and I have an idea the graphics come in there somewhere but it's quite a while since I was doing this sort of thing.

As an aside... I have a friend who has a fault with the BIOS - won't hold setting for booting from CDROM otherwise fine. To do troubleshooting I had to unplug the SATA drive to get it to boot from CDROM drive then plug the SATA back in (just as well SATA is hot pluggable).

[onomatopoeia]

Yup, it's not getting as far as trying to boot an operating system, it's failing during POST.

You should get some kind of message beyond "Press F1 to retry" etc. Yesterday I got "Keyboard failure. F1 to continue, F2 to Setup". Really.

[Gina]

Brilliant that!!! :lol

[silver]

make sure if using IDE drives you have the jumpers set right,. generally easiest to put each drive on a sep cable on the end connector and set to master,. or both both on same cable w/ the cdrom on the end and both set to cable select - other combinations work

[Doctor Snuggles]

A quick search of the Dell Knowledge base, throws up a few suggested remedies.

1 - Replace cables

2 - Make sure all drives are set to CABLE SELECT and on correct connectors

3 - After doing the above, clear bios nvram, and force redetection of all hardware. Use 1 of methods below:

Clearing the NVRAM for the; GX300, GX200

By Jumper:

Turn off the computer and disconnect the power cable from the electrical outlet.
Remove the computer cover.
Locate the 3-pin CMOS jumper (RTCRST) on the system board.
Remove the jumper plug from pins 1 and 2.
Place the jumper plug on pins 2 and 3 and wait approximately 5 seconds.
Replace the jumper plug on pins 1 and 2.
Close the computer cover.

By System Setup:

Light the three keyboard lights. Press Alt E until you hear the beep. Save and reboot.

Hope this helps.

[Doctor Snuggles]

Odyssey, where are you?

[Odyssey]

AWOL, lol.

Apology for the disappearance. Had to make a quick trip out of town [posse right behind me ;<) ] and just back but can only take a minute to let you know that I'm not wheels up. Will try to get back to this tomorrow and see what I can see re battery etc.

thanks for all the great input.