Boot problem

ScuffScuff Southwestern, Pennsylvania
edited March 2004 in Hardware
I have a Dell dimension 2100, 1.1 celeron, 256 ram, XP home and everytime I start it up it says insert "boot diskette in A" , I hit control+alt+delete then it goes to the xp startup screen. I have the boot sequence set to floppy first then IDE-HDD then cd. Even when I either set the floppy to boot last or not at all it always does this on the first boot attempt. anybody know why? and how I can get it to stop doing this? Is it a bad floppy drive? :scratch:

Comments

  • ScuffScuff Southwestern, Pennsylvania
    edited March 2004
    anyone
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Does the drive work properly? It sounds like maybe it thinks there is a disk in there. Did you have the metal cover come off a disk and stick in the drive? I've seen that do what you describe. Does the light stay on all of the time?

    Try booting from a floppy and see what happens.
  • ginipigginipig OH, NOES
    edited March 2004
    Try to physically disconnect it, or to disable floppy controller in Bios.
  • tophericetopherice Oak Ridge, TN
    edited March 2004
    Sounds like your Master Boot Record may be hosed. First I would suggest making sure you have a good backup. Then I would suggest booting to the floppy drive, then issue fdisk /mbr. That should delete your MBR and it should be recreated the next time you boot. If that doesn't work then format c:.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited March 2004
    When it can't boot from the hard disk you get that message usually. I don't use the home version of XP as you can't do repair installs but if home allows use of the recovery console you can boot from the XP cd and once into the command line recovery console use fixmbr and then fixboot

    And don't format C: There are better ways to just fix whats there

    Tex
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    Scuff wrote:
    ...it always does this on the first boot attempt...
    Is there a place in the bios to adjust "Initial Delay For IDE" or something like that?

    Maybe your HD is slow to spin up. By the time you go through the other junk it has finally come up to speed.
  • ScuffScuff Southwestern, Pennsylvania
    edited March 2004
    There is a plug and play os choice or let the BIOS decide, I've been trying that. There is also a clear bios boot memory or something, I just tried changing that tonight. It's ALWAYS on the FIRST boot attempt only. I'll keep messing with it, you guys keep the ideas coming. I also tried putting a floppy in it, and it did read the floppy just fine. Does Dell Suck? My limited opinion says they do.
  • ginipigginipig OH, NOES
    edited March 2004
    Does Dell Suck? My limited opinion says they do

    Chalk it up to the hypnotic powers of that "Dude, you're getting a Dell" guy.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2004
    I forgot that Dell doesn't give you much to play with in the bios...

    Most MB's have a featured that tells the POST routine to wait a few seconds before initializing the HD. This gives it more time to spin up to full speed. What you are doing is a work-around for that, albeit not as simple.
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