Solve : Del dimension will not boot up?

1.	Solve : Del dimension will not boot up?
Answer» My brother in law gave me his computer to fix. It is a Dell dimension 4600 with XP home. When it comes on the screen says press F! to try to reboot or F2 to enter SETUP. I changed the boot order to CD and floppy. Neither one will boot up. I put a new battery in it. after it wouldn't boot to neither a cd or floppy I pulled the hard drive out. I hooked it to my computer. I can access all of the files. Does anybody have any suggestions?If it won't boot to an external drive it's for one of three reasons: 1) That drive is not at the top of the bios boot order or 2) The medium to which you are trying to boot is either bad, not bootable, or not an original OS disc or 3) The drive itself is bad One other long shot can be a bad mobo battery.I changed the battery. I changed the boot order to the cd and tried it. It wouldn't boot to it. I have a good bootable XP cd. I changed the boot order to the floppy also. It wouldn't boot to it either.The above are the only reasons I know of why a system will not boot to removable media. Quote from: Allan on April 05, 2012, 10:44:38 AM The above are the only reasons I know of why a system will not boot to removable media. Assuming the removable media are in good condition and are themselves bootable and the order correctly set up in the BIOS, to that I would add loose, damaged or disconnected power and/or data cables and failed motherboard hardware e.g. either part (disk controller) or all the chipset. Or the PSU (see below!) By the way, when I was Googling to find out A. roughly how OLD this machine might be, to get an idea of whether it is worth B. spending much time and C. any money on it, (answer: A. OLD (9 years old P4 machine), B. no, and C. NO!!!) I came ACROSS this: Quote from: PC World Magazine The 10 Worst PCs of All Time Remember these clunkers? Many of them were so bad they're hard to forget. By Dan Tynan, PCWorld Mar 19, 2007 8:00 am #10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003) Consumers who purchased this machine entered a new dimension all right, the altered dimension of Dell censored. The Dimension 4600 was only a middling machine when new, but after about a year--or shortly after the standard warranty expired--power supplies in some machines began to fail. Worse, Dell's customer support misdiagnosed some of these problems as motherboard failures. Dell's support forums filled up with complaints from similarly powerless users, but the COMPANY refused to admit to defects with the power supply. (Dell politely declined to comment for this article.) The Dimension 4600's problems were yet one more reason why the "Dude, You've GOT a Dell" tagline became a joke--though not a particularly amusing one for some customers. So the PSU might have partly failed, I guess. Beware! Many Dell PSUs need to be replaced with Dell PSUs, not other brands, because although Dell used standard connectors, they wired them differently from industry standard, which means mixing Dell and non-Dell parts can lead to dead motherboard and PSU. Personally, on a 9 year old P4 Dell 4600 I would be advising a replacement purchase together with recovery of personal files from the drive. (This machine was only #10 of the 10 worst. #1 was "any Packard Bell".)

Answer»

My brother in law gave me his computer to fix. It is a Dell dimension 4600 with XP home. When it comes on the screen says press F! to try to reboot or F2 to enter SETUP. I changed the boot order to CD and floppy. Neither one will boot up. I put a new battery in it. after it wouldn't boot to neither a cd or floppy I pulled the hard drive out. I hooked it to my computer. I can access all of the files. Does anybody have any suggestions?If it won't boot to an external drive it's for one of three reasons:

1) That drive is not at the top of the bios boot order or

2) The medium to which you are trying to boot is either bad, not bootable, or not an original OS disc or

3) The drive itself is bad

One other long shot can be a bad mobo battery.I changed the battery. I changed the boot order to the cd and tried it. It wouldn't boot to it. I have a good bootable XP cd. I changed the boot order to the floppy also. It wouldn't boot to it either.The above are the only reasons I know of why a system will not boot to removable media. Quote from: Allan on April 05, 2012, 10:44:38 AM

The above are the only reasons I know of why a system will not boot to removable media.

Assuming the removable media are in good condition and are themselves bootable and the order correctly set up in the BIOS, to that I would add loose, damaged or disconnected power and/or data cables and failed motherboard hardware e.g. either part (disk controller) or all the chipset. Or the PSU (see below!)

By the way, when I was Googling to find out A. roughly how OLD this machine might be, to get an idea of whether it is worth B. spending much time and C. any money on it, (answer: A. OLD (9 years old P4 machine), B. no, and C. NO!!!)

I came ACROSS this:

Quote from: PC World Magazine

The 10 Worst PCs of All Time
Remember these clunkers? Many of them were so bad they're hard to forget.

By Dan Tynan, PCWorld Mar 19, 2007 8:00 am
#10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)

Consumers who purchased this machine entered a new dimension all right, the altered dimension of Dell *censored*. The Dimension 4600 was only a middling machine when new, but after about a year--or shortly after the standard warranty expired--power supplies in some machines began to fail. Worse, Dell's customer support misdiagnosed some of these problems as motherboard failures.

Dell's support forums filled up with complaints from similarly powerless users, but the COMPANY refused to admit to defects with the power supply. (Dell politely declined to comment for this article.) The Dimension 4600's problems were yet one more reason why the "Dude, You've GOT a Dell" tagline became a joke--though not a particularly amusing one for some customers.

So the PSU might have partly failed, I guess. Beware! Many Dell PSUs need to be replaced with Dell PSUs, not other brands, because although Dell used standard connectors, they wired them differently from industry standard, which means mixing Dell and non-Dell parts can lead to dead motherboard and PSU. Personally, on a 9 year old P4 Dell 4600 I would be advising a replacement purchase together with recovery of personal files from the drive.

(This machine was only #10 of the 10 worst. #1 was "any Packard Bell".)

Solve : Del dimension will not boot up?

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