Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Will not boot

0 helpful
5 replies

by ladlenits

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
My Dell 4100 is having problems booting up. It will boot fine if it is restarted but when it is booted up cold when the power is off then it is turned on it gives me a message that says "invalid boot disk, please insert a bootable floppy in drive A:" My BIOS is set to look for the system files on my HD first then the floppy. Even when it was floppy first i got that message. Whenever i do get this message i just push the restart button and it restarts fine. I have no idea what it is, ive flashed the BIOS to the latest version and i have no idea where to go from here. Also when this computer does boot it takes a very long time to get past the Dell "splashscreen" that comes up when it is restarted, like almost 45 seconds. Please Help!?!

5 replies

by vinnyd

It would appear that your computer is having either a hard time recognizing the hard drive or it can not read the boot sector from the hard drive easily until the drive has warmed up.

Make a boot disk (windows startup disk) and when your try and boot the 1st time of the day use the floppy and see if once the computer boots up you can do a directory of the C: drive. That will tell you the computer is recognizing the hard drive in the cmos properly.

Next remove the floppy and try and boot from the hard drive. If you still get the error the boot sector needs to be re-written to see if that will fix it.

If not a re-format of the hard drive is in order to see if the hard drive will fail.

Then replace the hard drive if it does.

by freetech

first of all, the long boot time is not unusual. i have a dell and it does the same thing.
second, go into your bios and set an ide delay. this will keep the computer from accessing your hard drive before it has spun up to speed. when you hit the reset, it works because your hard drive is already up to speed and the system can access your device without a wait for spin-up.

This discussion is closed to new replies.