Inaccessible Boot Device

**Farrar** · July 24th, 2007, 01:09 PM

I have one of our Dell dimension 330 workstations that I am having problems with. I have replaced the suspected bad HD, inserted the Windows 2K Pro CD, and go through the installation of the setup files. But, the process stops near the end with a BSOD saying “Inaccessible Boot Device” As the system is booting I can see the drive size, serial number, etc. so I know that it can “See” the drive. I have replaced the IDE cable and the drive jumper has been swapped from Master to Cable Select with the same results. The IDE cables for both the HD and CD-ROM do not plug into the MB but rather into a PCI card. I have tried to access boot floppies and changed the boot sequence in the BIOS to access the floppy drive first but I get an error message to either press F2 for setup or F1 to Retry.

Any ideas on which direction I need to go on this. I am leaving it for the moment and moving on as I have a new Dell that just arrived that must have our software package loaded, set up on the network, and delivered to the correct department.

Thanks,

Jeff Farrar

**Farrar** · July 25th, 2007, 04:06 PM

I solved this issue. The IDE cables for the HD and CD-ROM both plugged into a PCI card. I copied the driver files from the ATA-133 Installation CD for that PCI card and inserted it at the point where setup asks do you have a RAID controller, mass storeage device, etc.

Worked like a charm.

Jeff Farrar