Comp no start!

N

nesbandit

New Member
Hello everyone! Merry Christmas!

I have an older dell dimension E510 that was working fine when I put it in storage about 6 months ago but when I took it out the other day it isnt finding a operating system on any of my drives. I am not a computer expert by any meens and was wondering if it is as bad as I think(bad drive) or if it might be something simpler to fix. Thanks for any imputs.
 
Have you checked the connections on the Hard Drive.

Disconnect and re-connect the SATA and power cables from the Hard Disk. Also check no critters have been inside chewing cables.
 
I disconnected and reconnected the SATA drive and looked at all the other wires. Didnt see anything that looked damaged though. It is still doing the same thing, which is the dell simble comes up and when it goes away the screen goes blank with the curser blinking up in the left corner. The computer isnt making any noise when it is doing that either (ie like it is thinking).
 
It is sitting there waiting for something to boot from.

Reboot and when you see the Dell logo press F2 to get into the Bios.

Once there go to system devices and see if it displays your hard disk. If it is not displayed I guess it has failed.

If it is displayed, go and check the boot order. It may be trying to boot from some usb device or floppy etc.
 
I haven't seen too many hard disks fail just from sitting in a cupboard. I think it is probably a flat bios battery and just needs to be re-configured. See if the bios detects the hdd and go from there.
 
The HDD could be damaged if it was cold. You could try replacing the CMOS battery, that may possibly have something to do with it.
 
With it unplugged, push the power button a few times. Pop the side off and take the motherboard battery out for a few minutes. Replace the battery, plug it up and see if it will fire up.
 
I went into setup and it is showing the hard drive in the drive section. I had it stored in my garage from when I moved here (Tallahassee, FL) so it might have been a little warm but it has not been real cold though.

I will check to see if the battery is bad and let you guys know what I find out. Thanks again for all the suggestion, they have been a great help!
 
Swapped the battery out with one in my extra car remote. It started to boot but said the battery has a low charge, so I am going to run get one when Wallyworld opens tomorrow morning. Thanks again for the help! Will let you know if it works.
 
Got a good battery and now it does a short check and the it says no floppy disk found press f1 to continue or f2 for setup. Nothing happens when I press them though and I have pressed both.
 
Is there a floppy disk drive present? You may need to go into the BIOS and disable it. Some older boards won't boot unless a floppy disk drive is present.
 
As the battery was flat it has lost its settings.
Go into BIOS and turn off the floppy, set the time and date and also check the boot order to make sure it is going to boot from the hard disk.
 
Sorry about the delay but had to work a couple 14 hour days. I have a new battery installed and set the time. If I just hit the power it comes up with the no floppy diskette found hit F1 to continue. If I go in the system settings and change it so I dont have a floppy I just get a blink cursor when I hit the power. I have it booting from the sata drive. I did a diagnostic on the sata drive and it is good. Am I going into the correct spot to change the floppy setting?
 
When you turn the machine on you would get some sort of BIOS logo come up. While that is displaying press F12 a few times to bring up the boot menu options (assuming your machine supports this).

When the boot menu comes up what options are available to boot from. Also in what order ie top to bottom are they.
 
The options come up in this order

* Onboard SATA hard drive
* Onboard or USB CD-ROM drive

then it has

* System setup
* Hard drive diagnostic
* Boot to utility partition

I have went into system setup from here and ran the hard drive diagnostic, but when I tried boot to utility it did nothing at all just stayed on that screen.
 
ok. So if you arrow down to *Onboard Sata Hard Drive and press Enter does it boot into windows or does the cursor flash again?

If it boots into windows I would check the boot order in the bios and change the SATA hard disk to the first boot device.

If it goes to the flashing cursor and no further there could be a problem with the windows installation. If this is the case boot from a windows disc and attempt to do startup repairs.
 
Then I suspect either the hard disk is faulty or there is a problem with the windows installation.

Leaning towards faulty disk. If there was a problem with the mbr or windows boot files there would normally be some time of error.

Boot from a windows disk and see if it can perform a startup repair or if it even recognises the windows installation.
 
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