Boot problems

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grifter43

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I've had this same problem before and it turned out to be a bad power supply.

Everytime I try to start my desktop, the BIOs runs through and then outputs "No bootable devices found, strike F1 to try again or F2 to enter setup."

I tried going to setup and booting from my CD-ROM but I noticed that the set up page indicates that the devices aren't installed. I would love to try to use a diskette but I don't have a boot disk made.

Plus, I don't see how that would solve my problem even if I was able to reboot.

The only thing I can figure is that I got a virus. The desktop has been working perfectly for over 3 months ever since I initially solved the issue.

How do I fix this now?

I have a Dell Dimension 4300 desktop with a WD 120 GB HD and Thermaltake 420W PSU running on Windows Xp Home edition.
 
well if you think it's a virus you could remove your hard drive and hook it up as a slave in another computer and scan for viruses.

i would also try another motherboard battery. seems like it is forgetting what it has?

is your hard drive and cd-rom plugged in good?

these kind of problems can be alot of things and you just need to test things out.

i would try also a complete wipe of your hard drive and reinstall windows and also reset your bios to default.

hope one of these helps.
 
Yeah, I checked all of the connections, but that is very good point about the CMOS battery. That totally skipped my mind. It is over three years old, I guess that is one thing I ought to check.

Thanks ZeroX. I'll try that.
 
I put the new cmos battery in and after it did its automatice IDE configuration it worked, but it still took a couple of times. I still had the same error the first two times I booted up. Is it fixed or do you think there is still a problem here?
 
Its quite possibly solved it, but im not too happy saying that for definite. Does it work every time now? It may be that something changed independantly from the battery between the second and third boot.

You have checked the conenctions, are the jumpers set correctly? I think they are otherwise it would never have worked well. Check the drives are getting a good supply, if your bios delivers voltage readings then great if not get a multimeter and check that the supply is as close to the correct number (12v i beleive for standard drives, may be wrong) and let us nkow what you find.

Also check for potential shortages on your motherboard, maybe a lose screw behind it.

Hope this helps
 
Yes you should have 5 and 12 volts on the end of the connectors, the two middle are both grounds :)

It could be many things. A corrupted BIOS could be one, you can try reflashing it (if it's even possible)

The second thing, is dell use the crummiest peices of shit parts in their computers. Im not suprised by a dell doing this at all.
 
Um, I don't think that dell would use crummy parts, or else they would be swamped with tech support calls. They just try to save money as much as they can, which means possibly giving you a 487 Pentium 4 instead of a 775 pentium 4.
 
Dell is swamped by tech support calls...thats y they outsource their support ppl 2 India
 
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