Hello there-this is my first post, thanks for viewing!!!

Yesterday my sister gave me a computer she hasn't used in about a year, she is moving and is trying to get rid of excess items.

It's a Dell Dimension 4600, approx 2 years old, but used very sparingly(I believe everything is still "factory" as she isn't into computers that much)

Today I was working on it, trying to get it to START up-The original hdd is an 80gb Seagate, I know she had Win MCE on it. Basically I cannot get the computer to boot, I keep getting a "Strike F1 to reboot, F2 to go to setup UTILITY"... Checked Bios, it is not detecting the drive, so just for the fun of it I installed her hdd on my computer-started just fine, so I tried a different hdd(from my computer that is working just fine) still nothing.

Any Ideas? No drives are being detected even the DVD drive, and I have tried 2 different dvd drives.

THANKS!

Deanna

EMail address renoved to prevent Spam...Sorry-should also add I am getting 2 short beeps when starting up.

Thanks againSounds like you may have a bad memory stick...

How many sticks are in the memory slots? Try one at a time until you can determine the one that's causing the issue.

Keep us POSTED...just checked

It has 4 memory slots, I have 4 cards, took them all out one by one, tried them in each slot-still no luck

Thanks though!If it's been sitting not used for awhile i would replace the CMOS battery...




Part # CR2032 available at any computer store.
Make sure to remove all power sources when opening the case.
Also while in there re-seat the video card and any other addon cards...
And double check the IDE ribbon cable connections to the MBoard.Thank you-

Ok, so I got the computer to finally recognize a hard drive, it will attempt to boot, but sends me to the ""Windows did not start properly" screen-any option i pick it just sends the computer into the same old reboot cycle.... It looks like it is attempting after picking an option, then it restarts(but when this same hdd is used on my computer, it doesn't do this, checked it 3 different times, just to make suredid you or did you not change the cmos battery?Yes, CHANGED the cmos batteries:-)

Still it's doing the reboot cycle Do you have a Windows CD that came with it to do some repairs ? ?Hi,

My name is Todd and I'm with Dell's online outreach program. I just saw this thread and wanted to see whether you had been able to get the problems with that system resolved. If not, PLEASE let me know and I'll see what I can do to help you. It could be a few different sources causing the problem and we may be able to define it down a bit more for you.

I'll stop back to see if you still need help with this issue.

Thank you,

Todd

Customer Advocate
Dell, Inc.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2006/11/19/3648.aspx