Dell laptop help please

[sedanman32]

Help
Ive just been given a dell inspiron 7000 laptop. It has a french keyboard and seems to work to a degree.
The problem is when i switch it on it cant find the boot sequence untill i put in the floppy.
Then it runs and passes the full test ,
Then it comes up with a black screen with A:/>_

Any idea where i need to go from here ?????

Thanks in advance
Steve...

[inspectercoley]

Does it have an operating system installed?

Also make sure it actually has a hard drive inside.

Type dir c:\ then see if there is a windows folder.

If you cannot access the c drive it is likely there is no hard drive.
If you can and it has no windows folder then you need to get a copy of xp and install that

If it does have a windows folder then check the boot order in the bios.
Make sure IDE 0 is the first boot device (or at least that floppy is after IDE-0)

[sedanman32]

OK
When i switch it on it comes up with the Dell screen then the message "Operating system not found"

Please remember im very thick when it comes to computers so be gentle with me

[BertRoot]

I would think that there is no OS on the drive. My suggestion would be to get a bootable Windows XP install disc and waz it in the CD drive and try booting off that.

[inspectercoley]

Ok sorry,

You should then try to boot to the bios screen.

To do this restart the machine and then press the key for the bios.
Usually delete or F2. It should tell you which key it is though.

In the bios you then need to look for boot priority probably in advanced settings or a boot menu of its own.

Then you need to change the order of this so that the hard drive boots before the floppy disk drive.

If this doesnt work then you will need an operating system cd which will guide you through the process of formatting and installing the new OS

[apllrd]

you will also need a key, a long alpha numeric code found on a sticker somewhere on the laptop, should have something like windows (operating system i.e. 2000,xp,vista)
then coa (long code). you will need a dell installation disc that matches the operating system. you can get ropey (cough) copies but they will noy include some of the drivers you will need.

[inspectercoley]

or just download the drivers from here:

http://support.euro.dell.com/support...&catid=&impid=

or choose the relevant options from the link below if the above link doesn't work

http://support.euro.dell.com/support...ds/index.aspx?

or get the zip file from here since the above doesn't seem to have any actual drivers, just updates

http://www.driverfiles.net/Notebooks...2,416,19,.html

[sedanman32]

went ito bios and changed it to boot fro hard drive but it still wont do anyrhing unless i put the floppy in.
I dont have a copy of XP but i do have windows 95 or 98 , Any good ?
I do have an XP disc somewhere but cant find it at the moment.
Will it matter that this machine is very old ?

[sedanman32]

OK ive just reread all the above and typed in dirc:\

Now i have the message !Not ready rteading drive A
Abort, Retry, Fail?

[inspectercoley]

How old is very old.
The dell inspiration does come shipped with xp so it shouldnt be a problem. The size of Ram will be the main thing that will effect how well it runs since xp like to have at least 512mb

windons98 might be alright if you have the drivers cd but if not then it would be a huge pain. The main benefit from xp is that you will only really need to get graphics and sound drivers and the rest should work ok.

try just typing c:\
If you cannot access this drive then it might not exist.
When you turn the machine on press escape a few times and it should bring up what is called a post screen.
Here it will say things that are detected by the machine such as CD drive and IDE drive.
Make sure that it detects the hard drive. If not you may have to have a look insude to see if there is one attached

The windows xp install cd will also be able to tell you if you have an appropriate drive available to do the install

[sedanman32]

not sure how old it is but the discs that were with it are here ( I hope)

http://s33.photobucket.com/albums/d6...rent=zz001.jpg

[inspectercoley]

wow windows 95. Well if you have all of the drivers on cd then you should just be able to put windows 95/98 on and then install the drivers using the blue cd.

If the laptop came with 95 then it will probably not run xp well at all.
Maybe you should just throw it away and get a new laptop that isn't over 10 years old

[sedanman32]

:smile I cant afford a new laptop Im very poor and have loads of kids, I was hoping to get this up and running son my so could use it.

Meantime this is the screen i get when i hit the esc button on startup .

http://s33.photobucket.com/albums/d6...rent=zz002.jpg

[chubblies]

The fact that it has a w95 disk gives you an idea of the age (around 10 years old). There is a review here, and going by the spec, it is not worth doing anything with
EDIT going by the bios screen, it will not run xp, min xp spec is 300Mhz proc and 128M RAM

[inspectercoley]

Wow a Pentium II 266. That is very very slow.
Assuming nothing else appears after DVD ROM then this machine has no hard drive installed.

You may have to buy / find one and install that as well.

Its relatively easy to do you just need to find the place where it goes by unscrewing some of the back compartments.

Make sure check first that there is not one there alreaday and its just come disconnected or broken and then make sure you order a lap top hard drive (2.5") normally around £30 or £40

But to be honest this is so old that it will probably be a lot more trouble than its worth.
And windows 95/98 are quite poor operating systems, and apparently the battery life of this thing is terrible so it will be even worse now that is really really old

[sedanman32]

Just took the back off and id had a hard drive .

[inspectercoley]

Thats odd, not sure why its not detected at post.

Try taking it out and then reattaching it to make sure it is connected properly.
But you will then need to boot from the windows 98 cd. (or 95 if you prefer!)

You may need to change the boot order again to boot from cd rom first.

Then choose start windows 98 setup from cd and follow the on screen instructions.

There is a tutorial here:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win9...exfullpage.htm

[sedanman32]

Thanks for all your help guys

I'll let you know how it goes