Bsod

**CCT** · January 11th, 2011, 10:40 AM

Is there a 'Force ESCD' option anywhere in that Bios?

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 10:44 AM

im not sure i will have a look when i get in front of the machine. If there is what should i do?

**CCT** · January 11th, 2011, 10:50 AM

That will basically foerce a hardware redetection, afailk.

Noo's suggestion should be a setting on the main Bios page.

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 11:00 AM

i have a feeling it doesnt- i think if it had i would have tried it already. The phoenix bios is about as simple as one can be!!

**Ferrit** · January 11th, 2011, 11:06 AM

Somewhere in that bios should be Boot Order or Boot Sequence and in there you should see the drives cdrom everything.
Also if it was me I would change Dell's retarded Cable Select type jumpers on the harddrives and cdrom if thats how they are set now.

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 11:15 AM

The boot sequence is only showing floppy disk though the bios does see the hard drives and CDRoms in the devices

**NooNoo** · January 11th, 2011, 01:16 PM

It tells us that it is detecting the drive, just the OS partition is screwed up.

As for quick boot - it's in a different place depending on the machine. Go through each bios option and look for quick boot, fast boot or something similar and it will be enabled - set to disabled. Quick boot doesn't check everything, it makes assumptions.

When you installed Win7, did you remove XP or did you upgrade it?

**CCT** · January 11th, 2011, 01:23 PM

Instead of 'quick boot' it might say 'memory test or 'check' or like that.

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 02:00 PM

Noo okay turned off fast boot and tried- no success. I powered off and removed cmos battery for about a minute checked all cables (for the millionth time) then powered back up- again no success. I had to reset the date/time and it did say (i think) system voltage low but i have replaced the battery with a new one and it only said that when i booted following replacing the battery- it subsequently didn't. As you say it is detecting both hard drives and both CDRom drives in the bios but not in the "boot sequence"

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 02:02 PM

regarding xp- I think the windows 7 was a fresh install but from only within the windows environment- i cant install from the CDROM on boot up as this option is not present so i would suspect XP files are still present in the c drive and in the registry.

**batgammon** · January 11th, 2011, 02:03 PM

it did create a windows.old file which i have moved onto my f drive (slave hard drive)

**CCT** · January 12th, 2011, 09:02 AM

You have bought another cable (s).

Are they the same, ie, 40 pin 40 wire or 40 pin 80 wire ?

Have you tried hooking the hd to the other Controller on the mobo ?

**batgammon** · January 12th, 2011, 11:21 AM

standard ide cable- 40 pin i believe. I dont think there is another controller on the mobo-only one system socket as far as i know, however I would say that its not the cables or hard drives or memory etc because the bios does see everything but not in the boot sequence- only floppy showing so it must be something bios induced. is there any DOS program which actually allows you to get into the bios and change the settings which i could boot from a floppy? I have a feeling the answer is no to this and because its ROM memory its time to get a new motherboard!

**CCT** · January 12th, 2011, 12:10 PM

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...cs.htm#1103279

2 connectors - I'd think Primary presently has the hd and the other has the cd.

But that is probably not an issue.

As Noo Noo said, this would be an OS issue, at least as far as I can make out from this writeup -> http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...oot_record.htm

The 'bootability' of any IDE drives is established by the Bios accessing Upper memory.

So, perhaps that is a direction to take, ie, repairing the MBR.

**batgammon** · January 12th, 2011, 12:31 PM

You know what I think you are right and it would explain the issue. Now having established that how do you fix the MBR bearing in mind i can only boot from a floppy (no booting in CDROM drive) or from the utility partition?