Member Avatar for tinyminer

I understand this is an old machine... but it just died the other day. i am troubleshooting it for a coworker but am a little stuck. after posting, it would go to a blank screen that says "strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility" and no other error msg. It also beeps twice. First, i tried an os cd and it would go into setup, but when it got to the partition screen it says the drive is unreachable. and the keyboard didnt work (i have used that kbd for other machines and it worked fine) i plugged in an older kbd and that worked, though it shorted once.

It had bios A06, so i upgraded it to A10. then ran setup and it still couldnt read the drive. i took out one stick of ram, ran setup, same thing. switched the slot, same thing. then i switched the sticks and followed the same procedure but it didn't work. so it might be a corrupted harddrive, but i dont have a spare to test...

Any suggestions?

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A compact, practical triage for older OptiPlex desktops that refuse to finish booting. Contributors , and raised useful points earlier; the checklist below fills the common gaps and gives low‑cost, ordered steps to isolate the fault before replacing parts.

Do these in order and stop when you get a consistent result:

  • Power down and unplug. Open the case and look for obvious damage (bulging capacitors, burn marks) and loose connectors.
  • With power off, reseat and swap the IDE/PATA ribbon and the drive power lead; confirm the cable’s pin‑1 orientation.
  • Verify drive jumper mode (single/master/cable‑select) matches the cable configuration.
  • Confirm the PSU: either swap in a known‑good unit or verify +5V/+12V rails with a multimeter. Marginal rails cause strange detection failures.
  • Boot the board with minimum components (CPU, one DIMM, video) to watch POST behavior or beep patterns — this isolates motherboard vs peripheral faults.
  • Run bootable diagnostics: a vendor HDD test ISO and MemTest86 will reliably show a failing drive or DIMM.
  • If possible, attach the suspect drive to another system or via a USB‑IDE adapter and check SMART/read access.

Record any BIOS messages, beep codes or crash text exactly — they’re vital for diagnosis. Avoid using visibly damaged PS/2 or USB peripherals while testing; take photos of jumpers/cable routing before changing them.

If these steps don’t isolate the issue, image the drive for data safety and then choose repair vs replacement based on which component failed the tests. These checks typically save time and money compared with blind part swaps.

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Member Avatar for tinyminer

oh i forgot to mention, after exiting the partition screen in setup, it bluescreened and i got stop error 0x8e (0xC0000005, 0xF84CACAD, 0xF80737E4, 0x0) setupdd.sys--Address F84CACAD base at F849E000, Datestamp 41107c8f... ??? 0x8e is usually a RAM error, but that didn't seem to do anything, plus it is posting... I'm thinking it is the harddrive or the mobo.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

Hi, and sorry to take so long to get to this question.

Have you tried replacing the CMOS battery and then running the hard drive auto detection in BIOS setup?

Your problem sounds like a dead CMOS battery, and on many old systems once CMOS had no battery backup the hard drive detection needed to be run again before the drives could be identified by the system. It's worth a try!

Member Avatar for tinyminer

um, yeah actually i solved the problem last week. i didnt bother to post an update cuz no one showed interest in this topic.

i simply tested it with a different harddrive and it worked. so i replaced the harddrive. voila!

Member Avatar for BSkiLLs

um, yeah actually i solved the problem last week. i didnt bother to post an update cuz no one showed interest in this topic.

i simply tested it with a different harddrive and it worked. so i replaced the harddrive. voila!

I am having the same type issues but will not pull up anything but what you also said. Keeps telling me "no drive detected" or no OS found"

I think i already checked the HD and it was ok, so i think its my motherboard gone bad or my Bios. All of it happened all of a sudden after a Mcafee update came through on two of my home office computers. It killed the hard drive on my HP (brand new PC) and did this to my Dell (same PC ) as posted subject title.

So im just getting around to fixing it and a buddy of mine that owns a computer repair service and does work on call for like Bestbuy and Circuit City when they was still open. He actually worked for the extended warnity people but..

Im pretty good ,with computters myself but this one had me stumped, he advised me to try and download the bios on a floppy and run them and see if that works, If not then there that computer goes. Better just to buy a new tower then a motherboard for this issue and age of unit uh..

What do you guys think it mi9ght could be ? Plus a Dell link for the bios ?

I'm going to look and search now so might have them by the time somebody posts to this.

Thxs

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