Member Avatar for annamaria58

Hello everyone I had to reinstall winxp and changed the boot settings, but now i can't change it to boot from hard drive instead of CD rom, it will not let me change any settings at all. I have Dell Dimension 4500S and the Bios version is Dell Computer Corporation Version A03. Please help! :icon_eek:

Thanks everyone.

Anna

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

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Brief summary and next steps for (and others with the same symptom).

If the BIOS setup screens refuse all changes after a reinstall, the cause is usually either a configuration lock (supervisor/setup password or a motherboard write‑protect), or the firmware simply isn't seeing the hard drive so changing boot order appears ineffective. 's suggestion to clear CMOS is a common first step; below are further checks and low‑risk workarounds if that does not resolve it.

  1. Verify the drive is visible to the BIOS. Enter Setup (on Dells of that era use F2) and look for the installed HDD under System Information or IDE/SATA devices. If the drive is not listed, check power and data connections (and master/slave jumper settings on older PATA drives) or test the drive in another machine/USB adapter.

  2. If the drive is listed but you still cannot change the saved Boot Order, use the one‑time boot menu (F12 on most Dells) to boot from the hard disk now without altering BIOS settings.

  3. If the BIOS sees the drive but Windows won’t start, repair the boot records from the XP CD Recovery Console. Typical commands to run are:

fixmbr
fixboot
chkdsk /r
  1. If BIOS menu options are greyed out and require a password, that is a firmware lock. Clearing CMOS commonly removes it (as noted by @caperjack). If CMOS reset isn’t possible or successful, Dell support or an authorized technician can help with supervised password removal after ownership verification.

Avoid flashing the BIOS unless a vendor update explicitly fixes a configuration-lock bug; flashing carries risk. If the HDD is not detected after these checks, consider testing or replacing the drive.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

shut down computer ,open the box ,using either the bios reset jumper or just remove the battery for awhile will reset the bios to defaults ,and hdd is usually first before the cdrom

Member Avatar for annamaria58

shut down computer ,open the box ,using either the bios reset jumper or just remove the battery for awhile will reset the bios to defaults ,and hdd is usually first before the cdrom

Hi there thank you so much for your answer i appreciate it. I will try that and hopefully i will be able to reset the boot settings. Have a great evening!!

Member Avatar for caperjack

Have a great evening!!

thank you ,

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