Old rebuild? Bios does not recognize ide hard or CD drives.

[awhosu]

Hi all,

Background: I was asked to cleanup and install windows xp on an old Dell OptiPlex GX240. It looked like it was kept in the attic for years.

Clean: Before starting I turned it on and it booted up to login without problems. I turned it off and stripped it down, cleaned it up, replaced thermal cement,etc and put it back together again (I thought). I worked on a cement floor and had a wrist ground.

Disaster: When I turned it on, it did not boot, bios had not recognized the hard drive or the 2 optical drives.
I disconnected optical drives - HDD not found
Changed cables - no luck
Reconnected optical, disconnected HDD - optical drives not found
Disconected optical again used id2 for HDD - no luck
Booted to DOS (floppy works)
Used check edit- no HDD
Used diskedit - no HDD
[diagnostic light were green,green,green,yellow - Contact Dell for technical assistance??] :twisted:

:?: If any one can give me a few suggestion here I would appreciate it.

 

[evongugg]

Try a new cable.
My old Dell would never start right after cleaning with a spray. I had to let it sit for an hour.

 

[doolittle]

When the LEDs are all green that means it completed the POST, I would try and reset the CMOS, maybe try removing / reseating / replacing the CMOS battery.

 

[awhosu]

Thanks for the input. However, I had replaced the battery as part of the cleanup. Also after the problem started I put in 2 new IDE cables. And yes, it sat a day or so with several attempts to get it going again. I did think that there may be some devious tamperproof instructions in the bios, but I think I tried most of the obvious setting to no evail? However, Dell tends to use alot of "secret" keystroke instructions - but maybe I'm paranoid also.

Thanks

 

[Mondoman]

If you replaced the CMOS battery, and didn't follow the "clear the CMOS memory" procedure after that, it's most likely a CMOS problem.
First, follow the "clear the CMOS" procedure.
Second, make sure the IDE cables are plugged in in the correct orientation at both ends. Do this before turning the computer on again!

 

[awhosu]

The "clear cmos" did it. Although it still does not recognize the optical drives - but that's another problem. They are quite likely to be dead, so I will try them out on another machine.

Thanks a bunch. :lol:

 

[awhosu]

The "clear cmos" did it. Although it still does not recognize the optical drives - but that's another problem. They are quite likely to be dead, so I will try them out on another machine.

Thanks a bunch. :lol: