I have a Dell Dimension 9100 with 1 gig of ram and 160 gig hard drive XP Professional SP2. I had to shut if off a couple of weeks ago just power it down. When I tried to reboot the computer I got a error that it could not find \windows\system32\config\system. So smart me I grabbed the XP installation CD and started it up. It went all the way through and I pressed "r" to repair and is says it can't find a boot drive. So, I restart and go into the BIOS setup and everything shows up. I can see the hard disk, floppy, the two cd's. So that's not it, I also notice that I have a disk utility as part of the Dell diagnostics so I run that and every thing shows okay. Next Dell also includes a decision tree trouble shooting tool. Lo and behold there is a "no boot" problem I run all the diagnostics with that and no problem everything checks out.

So, now it's time for a little self help here I run a couple of off the shelf programs for fixing hard disk problems. None of them can find any it there the MBR apparently is okay and the partitions are good. I happen to have another Dell around so I pull the drive out of the 9100 and put it into 5150 install the drive and cable and fire up the machine I go into set up and if finds the disk drive from the 9100 okay and the machine starts up fine. When the machine comes up I have two hard drives and I can read all the data on both drives of course at this point I back up everything on the 9100 drive.

Now I have reformated the drive from the 9100 reinstalled it and I still have the same problem. I am so frustrated with this the drive seems to be okay I have even reloaded the drivers used the diagnostics from Western Digital for the drive and nothing seem to work. Do you have any idea where I should look next. I have contacted Dell support and they have been no help at all.

Thank you,
Ron Sliter