Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

Oh, good! From your other post, it looked like you didn't have the XP disk. Hopefully one of them also has all your motherboard drivers. If not, you can probably still get them from the Dell website.

I would just pick one of them, make sure your BIOS is set to with the CD drive as the first boot device and give it a try. You must do a cold boot, not a restart. If one of the disks boots up, then just use the installation disk to do a clean install of the os. I don't much like Dell, so I've never used one of their recovery disks. Try this link and scroll down to the part about reinstalling XP... Reinstalling XP

If none of this works, then you most likely have a hardware failure.

I have the red windows xp reinstallation disk in the cd-rom drive and have clicked on F12 when it starts up and for the menu it says standard or usb cd-rom drive or standard SATA hard drive. I have clicked on the cd-rom drive (I have bios set up that that starts up first) but when I click on the cd-rom drive it says boot device not available. f1 to retry boot, f2 for setup utility. I have clicked both f1 and f2, and nothing works. so then I put my USB cd-rom drive (remember I couldn't play DVD's in my computer cd-rom drive?) and tried that too, but it won't recognize my cd-rom drive to boot from the disk. Should I just give up? thankfully I do have this backup puter, but, I sure would like to get that going.

If your optical drives are not being recognized - both the internal and the external ones - then you are kind of out of luck. It could be that the OS is so compromised that it isn't picking up the USB connection. You could always purchase a new optical drive and install it in the PC. But I'm not sure I'd want to be investing a lot of money into this computer. Newegg only has about 5 of them with the old IDE interface and the cheapest one is $25. Does your motherboard have any SATA slots? Again, this all assumes you don't have a failed hard drive or RAM.

Do you have a local PC repair shop? Not the Geek Squad or whatever they have at the Big Box stores... Have you considered what I suggested before - calling Dell with your service tag? Or just going to the Dell website and entering your service tag there? There are just too many possibilities to explore here if you can't get the installation CDs to boot up.

I won't call the geek squad.... if I didn't have a back-up computer I might, but desktop computers are so cheap now, I think it would be smarter for me just to buy a new computer than put a bunch of money into this old one. hopefully this backup computer will last for a few years. if not, I will just commandeer my hubby's laptop. but, that one stinks at playing games.

Well, if you are thinking of getting a new one, let me know. A company called eCollegePC builds desktops for you as cheaply as you could build one yourself. You get ALL the driver and operating system disks and a 3 year parts and labor warranty for no extra charge. I've had them build 3 PCs for friends and a bunch of people over at Gameboomer have used them too. I had one of the computers they built sent to my house so I could set it up for my friend. When I went to turn it on, it blipped and that was it. I emailed Mike, the owner of eCollegePC and within 15 minutes he responded. I had told him I had a power supply tester and I could check it out, but I didn't want to open up the PC without his permission. He said to go ahead. I checked out the power supply and it was indeed bad. I had a brand new spare one here that would work and he said it was OK if I installed it. Within 45 minutes he had already credited my account for the new power supply, sent me a pre-paid return label to return the bad power supply and the computer was up and running. Try getting THAT kind of service from Dell or HP!!

Anyway, let me know if you want to check them out.

Wow, that does seem like a good company! If I buy a new computer, I will check with you first. Right now, money is rather tight and I will just try to nurse this backup computer along for a few years. That is why I wanted to get that dang old computer working.. it sure is nice having a backup. I am frustrated to the max right now. I worked at least 2 hours trying to get that computer working today... (besides many hours yesterday) and now my printer won't install on this computer... after many hours of trying and not getting anywhere I am thinking of just need a tall glass of lemonade and sit outside in the sun. oh... an my washing maching is on the blink... I washed all my rugs today and had to spin them twice to get out the water out of the bottom and then there was water all over my floor in the laundry room. so, 3 things not working in one day is just too much for this old lady.

You know our mothers and grandmothers always told us that these things always come in threes!

I've seen a laptop that refused to boot from an external USB CD drive until the internal CD drive (which was bad) was physically removed from the laptop. I don't know if it would be the same with a desktop (I'm assuming you have a desktop), but it might be. So I'd try removing the internal CD drive (or just unplugging the cords from it) before giving up.

Thanks, middletoe. That's definitely worth a shot. I agree with just unplugging either the power or data cable. Can't hurt to try!

okay, I think I will try that. but, just to make sure I understand, take out the hard drive from inside, boot up the computer and then for sure the cd-rom drive should start. when I get to the screen of the cd-rom drive to install again, then I should put the hard drive back in??? It is worth a shot.

thanks for the suggestion.

No, if you take the hard drive out, you will not have a computer or anything to boot up!! Open up the case and just disconnect one of the cables that go to the CD drive that isn't recognizing DVDs.

Plug in your exterior USB drive, put the XP DVD in and turn the computer on. You will have to change that boot order to USB device, not CD. middletoe has just seen a laptop that would not "see" the exterior drive with a defective CD drive connected to the computer. I'm not expecting anything to be any different, but we can hope!

we just tried everything. Larry took out the hard drive to see if it would recognize the cd-rom drive and nothing, either F1 or F2 were my only options, then he unplugged the cd-rom drive so just the hard drive was in and again, F1 or F2. changed my bios back to hard drive as booting first too... also then changed the bios to hard drive booting second, then i took off the numbers in front so it wouldn't boot at all, changed the 3 bios settings many times and nothing is working. I guess I will have to give up. thanks for the ideas though. it is funny that with this external cd-rom player plugged in too that it doesn't recognize it. in bios it says that it is not present....

I did a search for the error message, 0x0000007B and I got this link, but this is Greek to me.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316401

That's just another indication this is a hardware issue, possible a blown motherboard. If the external USB drive isn't seen, that points even more to a bad motherboard. Or even bad RAM.

Here's a possibility to rescue your hard drive, assuming it's not part of the problem. I did this with my old HP drive from 2004. I had to get a new case because the on/off switch was bad on my old case. But for less than $200, I got a new motherboard, processor, RAM and power supply. I put it all together with my old hard drive, installed the new motherboard drivers and my old XP hard drive is humming along quite nicely in its new home.

so, a blown motherboard, does that mean buying a new sata hard drive? that is around 150 to 200 dollars, right? is that worth it for this old computer? i think the graphics card and stuff is still good, and i suppose that would be cheaper than buying a new computer... dilemma, eh?

There is no way to tell what is actually wrong with this computer unless you take it in to a PC repair shop that has the tools to figure it out. All I'm doing is guessing, but several things point to a hardware issue.

What I did with my old HP drive was buy a new motherboard with an IDE interface and plug my old hard drive into it. I would suspect - unless you upgraded the computer - that it has graphics integrated into the motherboard, not a stand-alone video card. You could buy a new motherboard (with integrated graphics and sound) and processor for the vicinity of $135. Add 2 GB of RAM for about $20 and a new optical (DVD) drive for about $15, put it all in your old case and even reuse the old power supply. Pop in your old IDE hard drive, fire it up, install the new motherboard drivers, reactivate the OS and you're up and running on the old hard drive.

You could find out if the hard drive is still good by plugging it into your spare computer and seeing if it would boot up in there.

I keep forgetting to ask if this is an XPS 400???