Dell not booting to Vista

[kymberli]

Have a Dell Inspiron 5305. Today it wouldn't boot to Vista. It goes to the Dell screen but that's it. I can't get to the Boot menu because it than takes me to a screen that says ' Diskette drive 0 seek failure F1 to continue (than takes me to a black screen with a small line flashing in upper left corner) or F2 to go to set up menu. I've tried to put the Vista reinstallation CD in but it won't run. A few months back I had a similar problem due to a virus but was able to use the CD to fix it. Any ideas/advice?

 

[fadedrs]

can you get into the bios? if so is your HDD listed or no? and you can from there change your boot order so you can boot from the CD/DVD first.

also check all your cables to see if one did not just come loose.

 

[SIW2]

Sounds like it is trying to boot from a floppy drive - which presumably you don't have.

See if you can disable floppy drive in the Bios.

Also check boot drive order and make sure hd and cdrom drive are listed.

 

[kymberli]

So, I changed it to boot from the disk. Had to go through the boot menu to get it to do it. Anyhoo. Got to a screen with a loading bar that said loading windows files. Finished that now it's on a green-ish loading bar that usually pops up real quick when it boots to windows. Has the Microsoft Corp. logo underneath. How long should this be up there, it's been going on for half an hour.

 

[kymberli]

Okay, so evidently it's a night for real-time updates. Forget that. It's different now. I'll wait until I have a big problem to come back and bother yall. Thanks so much for the help.

 

[SIW2]

Hi kymberli,

I have no idea what your last post means.


Are you now able to boot from the Dell dvd, or did you try to boot straight into Windows?

It shouldn't have been sitting there that long.

You could try this:

1. Power on the system.
2. Press <F8> when the message For troubleshooting and advanced startup options for Windows, press F8 appears.
3. Choose Last Known-Good Configuration.

 

[kymberli]

Sorry, edited the last message.

I got to the vista screen where it was installing windows. Finished with that. It said it needed to restart in order to finish. Went right back to the diskette 0 seek failure screen. I did it three times. Should I try to reboot from the harddrive?

I tried the F8 thing and it brings me to the diskette screen.

 

[SIW2]

Try going back into Bios and reset it to default.

There is probably an instruction to press f10 (or similar) to reset to default.

 

[fadedrs]

to get into the bios it is either F1 F10 F11 or DEL keys one of those should bring you into it.

 

[kymberli]

I reset the bios before I even rebooted, should I do it again?

I've rebooted from the cd and reinstalled windows. Rebooted from the harddrive as well. Now my problem is this; When I turn the computer on, it still goes to the diskette 0 seek failure. I press F1 to continue and it boots to vista. There isn't anything there aside from the recycle bin on the desktop. I understand all files, photos, etc. would be lost but do I now have to reinstall everything, printer, modem, etc.? Also, it's telling me disk space is running out on RECOVERY (D and I need to make room by deleting programs I don't need. It also has a pop up box, the system maintenance/Welcome center everytime I start the computer. Everything is very large, too. Like I'm running it in safe mode. I'm at a loss.

 

[fadedrs]

sounds like your video card driver is not installed. but you should just do a full wipe and reinstall, that is what i would do so hopefully no problems later on

 

[dinesh]

Hi kymberli, every time you reset BIOS, it will take you to diskette drive seek failure message. So disable diskette drive in BIOS and then DO NOT reset BIOS.
Double-click on D Recovery drive and you will find many folders out there.
Delete the last folder.
If Welcome Center comes again, at its very bottom, there is a check box, Run Welcome Center when windows starts, (something like that), uncheck that box.
Go to this page and download and chipset driver.

Hope that helps,
Dinesh.

 

[fadedrs]

Here is dells web page for driver downloads

Drivers & Downloads

already set for your 530S desktop.

hope that helps all the drivers you should need for vista. just make sure your download the correct drivers

 

[kymberli]

I can't connect to the internet. Have to figure out how to get back onto my home network.
My main question is; Right now we're in Recovery (D..is there anyway to get back to C:? That's obviously where we need to be. I can't get onto the internet to download any drivers and we can't install anything because there isn't any space left on D:.

 

[fadedrs]

you cant get into the c partition at all? well that could be a bad partition or HDD going bad.

if it is a bad partition you would have to format it to get it back. do you have a extra HDD you could put into the pc and try to install to?

 

[kymberli]

Can't get it to boot to C but C isn't bad because all the windows.old files are still there.