Member Avatar for whipleg

hi there,hope you can help. i have a dell demension 4600 pent 4 xp sp3.1.5 gig ram 80gig hard drive:).i came home to find my pc was making a clicking sound and wouldn't do anything except tell me to press f1 or f2. f1 did nothing and f2 took me to the bios screen.i search your forum and found out it might be the battery so i changed this went to bios and reset the clock but i haven't a clue what i do next.when i turn on my pc i can only go to bios mode.i do not know what settings if any i am suppose to change.i would be very grateful for any help i might receive.dell were no help at all unless i was willing to cough up loads of warrenty has only just ran out.( typical )

Edited by whipleg because: n/a
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A concise, practical diagnostic checklist that complements the suggestions already posted by and . The focus here is low-risk checks and data-first recovery steps that apply to firmware/boot failures on older desktop systems.

Start with firmware-level visibility. Confirm whether any storage device appears in the firmware's device/boot lists. If no device is present, inspect the data and power connectors and try different controller ports or cables. Remove nonessential peripherals and try a minimal boot (one stick of RAM, one storage device) to rule out simple conflicts.

If a device is seen but the system will not load an OS, boot from external rescue media (a Linux live USB or appropriate Windows recovery media) to test access without touching the existing installation. Run SMART and manufacturer diagnostics from that environment. For filesystem/boot repairs on Windows-era systems, the recovery console commands commonly used are:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
chkdsk C: /r

For failing-media data preservation, create a full image before repeated repair attempts. On Linux, GNU ddrescue is a good option:

ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdX /path/to/target.img /path/to/logfile
ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdX /path/to/target.img /path/to/logfile

Limit power cycles on a drive that shows intermittent behavior; imaging first preserves recoverable data. If imaging repeatedly fails or the data is critical, professional recovery is the safest route, as advised by . For non-recoverable drives, replacement and a fresh OS install are the usual next steps. The off-topic BIOS-refresh query from should be moved to its own thread so it can be handled without distracting from the recovery workflow.

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Member Avatar for sinnerFA

A clicking sound? Well then I would check out the hard disk.... There are only a few "moving" parts on a computer and if there was a physical clicking then I would start there.

HTHs

Member Avatar for whipleg

thank you for the reply.i have taken out the hard drive and checked it i can't see anything wrong,i have also taken out the memory and cleaned them but with little sucess except i now get the error message problem loading operating system.i will keep trying cheers nicko

Member Avatar for Ponomous

thank you for the reply.i have taken out the hard drive and checked it i can't see anything wrong,i have also taken out the memory and cleaned them but with little sucess except i now get the error message problem loading operating system.i will keep trying cheers nicko

thats a hard drive problem, if your getting errors on boot and a clicking sound but you can still go to the bios 99% sure you have an internal hard drive error ie. you cant see it. take it to a best buy geek squad or a friend and get it checked there.

Member Avatar for caperjack

Hey buddy i hope that that you will also help me.I have an intel board 865 There is a problem with its bios.The version of board is not there so is there any way to know the version so i refresh the bios ?




hey buddy ,how about reading the rules and start you own thread and explain you problems ,thanks

Member Avatar for whipleg

hey buddy ,how about reading the rules and start you own thread and explain you problems ,thanks

cheers for the reply mate.i will take it to a mate to sort it,bit beyond my capabilities..cheers anyway..nicko

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