Recovering old dell pc

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Uri Yakir

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May 23, 2015
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Hi everyone,
Let me start off by saying I'm sort of a newbie.
My grandfather bought an old, second-hand dell optiplex 745 pc for around 30$.
He said the PC wasnt working and asked me to try and help him.
I took the pc home and attempted to start it up. It (surprisingly enough for a 30$ pc) didn't startup, but said "no boot up device", press f1 to retry or f2 for boot setup.
I realized their was no OS detected. I tried putting in the original os setup usb.
when I started the pc afterwards, it did detect the usb, but kept restarting over and over again after 5 seconds of starting to boot up.
I opened up the PC and I'm pretty sure there is no RAM installed. I'm gonna add a couple pictures of the interiors. Am i correct?
How do i proceed from here? Can the pc be saved?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
https://imgur.com/a/fRSKr
https://imgur.com/AhF9sim
 
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Math Geek

Math Geek

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there is a stick of ram but as jef noted, there does not appear to be a hard drive installed. that blue cage at the bottom left of the case is the hard drive cage. that's how we know there is no hdd installed since it is empty. the OS installs to the hard drive not the ram. so no hard drive = no way to install an OS.

you need to get a hard drive for it. it has a sata connection so you i'd go for a cheap sata hdd.
 
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mjslakeridge

mjslakeridge

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I think I see the 1 stick of RAM (Hard to tell from the angle of the picture), and I suspect the HDD is in the bay opposite the CD/DVD drive, but of the 4 SATA ports on the motherboard, I don't see any SATA cables connected. Maybe the HDD is IDE. What is that ribbon type cable right under the right drive bay connected to?

Edit: You're right Math Geek. I mistook the PSU in the upper right for a drive bay. Agree there is no HDD.

Edit 2: Also, it looks like there is only a power cable connected to the CD/DVD drive, not an IDE or SATA cable.
 
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Math Geek

Math Geek

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no problem. i've justed work on a ton of these type dell's :D

you can see a sata power cable tucked in front of the cpu fan. likely was for the hdd. i don't see a sata cable though and he will likely need one of those as well to hook up the hdd you buy. you'll also need one for the dvd drive up top. i don't see one on there either.

shopping list
1. sata hdd
2. at least 2 sata cables to connect the hdd and dvd drive
 
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mjslakeridge

mjslakeridge

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The DVD drive may be so old it is not SATA. From the amount of dust visible near the exhaust screen, I would take off the shroud (black plastic cover) from the cpu cooler and clean the fan. Probably would re-apply thermal paste also. But if the OP is a newbie, perhaps that is a task for someone else to perform.

I have a 10 year old Dell Optiplex 380 that is my wife's everyday computer. Has a pretty decent Intel dual core processor.
 
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Uri Yakir

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Very mature. Does it matter? I'm just trying to get some help regarding the hardware.
 
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Uri Yakir

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Thank you for your reply! Is there anyway to use a external usb or external hard drive to test it out? I don't want to spend money and end up with nothing...
 
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