Dell E510 XP Reinstallation Issues

[marlenejojo1]

A little background to the problems I have had. At first I had the 1 2 3 diagnostic lights lit green and it would be a black screen (when I power on) and would not load windows nor the dell screen (could not access bios). I took the cmos battery out and this time it flashed the dell screen so I went into the bios and disabled the floppy drive as there is not one and it fixed the problem...(booted fine) but then something else went wrong. I got the flashing amber light. I had a 500W psu I bought for this system anyway so I put that in and again was able to get back to windows. I decided to do a windows clean install as I was also getting explorer.exe and drwatson errors. During Xp setup I selected L to replace the windows folder with the files on my windows installation cd. Apparently doing this removed my ethernet adapter and controllers so now the windows cannot access the web to update the installation. Now the Windows installation freezes and will not continue. I tried restarting the computer and it went right back to the windows installation and froze again. I restarted a 3rd time and this time I got a black screen that says x300xtbios p/n 113-a33-437-102. What does this mean and how do I fix this... I tried popping out the cmos battery again (not sure what I was hoping for there but figured it couldnt hurt) and now I am back to the 1 2 3 green lights being on and the computer makes 2 beep sounds on start up. Only problem is this time I cant seem to get the dell screen to come up so I cant get into the bios again like I did last time. All I wanted was a clean windows installation. What does the x300xbios stuff mean..why did that come up and what should I do now? Please help!

 

[marlenejojo1]

Ok update, I managed to get back into the bios and disable the floppy drive again so now im back to the windows xp installation issue. Because the installation was interrupted it did not complete. When I start up the system it goes to the blue screen and says system setup restarting....and it reboots the computer...then goes to the same thing again system setup restarting...then reboots again continuously...what can I do to get windows to finish or restart the windows installation so it will stop looping like this??

 

[marlenejojo1]

Another update. I managed to complete the installation and it booted up to windows just fine for a little while. Then the system started rebooting itself randomly and now it is stuck on the logo screen at startup and just freezing while loading the bios. The 1 and 4 light is lit on the diagnostic lights..and sometimes when I boot it will go to a black screen that says x300xt bios p/n 113-A33-437-102. When this happens the diagnostic lights change to the 1 2 3 lights being lit up. What is causing these two errors and why cant my computer load past the bios screen?? Because it freezes when it does go to the logo screen I cannot enter the bios nor can I run any disks on it...help please what can I do??

 

[aford10]

you could check to make sure you have the most recent BIOS version. I think it's the A05
http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R121641&formatcnt=1&libid=0&typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=161979

You can also check your manual to see what the light codes are indicating.

 

[marlenejojo1]

I know there is a bios update available for my computer but I dont know how I can add it when it freezes on the logo screen so I cant run any cd. Do you think it is acting strangely because I dont have the most current bios?

 

[aford10]

If you're getting errors in the BIOS, then it's a good possibility.

If you aren't comfortable doing it yourself, you should take it to the store you bought it from and have them do it (assuming it's under warranty).

 

[marlenejojo1]

No warranty. I am not uncomfortable to do it myself I just don't know how I can update it when I cant get a cd to run and I cant get into the bios...kinda leaves me with no options (that I know of)..and I have no floppy drive.

 

[aford10]

You'll need a floppy drive. You could get one (~$10) or borrow someone's. You don't have to boot into windows to do the update. You'll create a bootable floppy and boot off that. It will start the BIOS update.
http://www.wikihow.com/Update-Your-Computer's-BIOS