Dell Inspiron 530s booting problem

[mikehende]

Just installed another Sata HDD, can't get into the BIOS using F2 nor boot menu pressing F12. When I power on, after the logo screen I am seeing:

No boot device available

SATA O: None

SATA 1: Installed

SATA 2: None

SATA 3: None

Help please?

 

[DSTM]

Hi Mike.
On boot you only have round a two second window to get into the Bios.
Sure your not missing it?
Try constantly tapping the "Delete" Key from boot startup and see if it makes any difference.

 

[mikehende]

Whenever I try to get into a bios I always start tapping at the logo screen when it shows the bios and boot menu options. Tapping the delete key does not make a difference. I am guessing this cannot be a HDD issue, right?

 

[DSTM]

Is the keyboard actually alive. Any lights on the keyboard when you hit the Caps Lock key?.

 

[mikehende]

Yes, KB is fine

 

[DSTM]

I am thinking PSU or Mobo at this stage if it's not possible to get into the bios.
Presume you have swapped out the ram and cleared the Bios.
Why was the computer brought to you, because it wouldn't do what?

 

[Rich-M]

Is Windows on the installed hard drive because if it is it should be plugged into Sata 0 Mike.
Sounds like mobo if no bios and no boot to cd on that age pc. Have you tried pulling the cmos battery out for 5 minutes and/or pulling and switching the cmos jumper and then returning it to reset the bios?
If you cannot get into bios, where are you reading those 4 sata entries because you also should be seeing dvd drive as one of them. Maybe that drive is shot as well or cable is shot.

 

[mikehende]

I didn't bother to try all of those things rich because this is a banged up pc and I have the same identical pc and this one does not start up like mine and the owner agrees it's time she gets a new one. I did remove the cmos battery, no change.

 

[mikehende]

Hey Rich, I honestly don't know what happened but now all of a sudden it looks like it's working again, I am loading Vista on the drive right now. Getting back to the SATA 0 issue, does it make that much of a difference if the drive is connected to SATA 0 port compared to where it is right now on SATA1?

 

[allheart55 (Cindy E)]

It's preferable to have the drive at SATA 0, Mike.

 

[mikehende]

Yeah, I did so and vista is installed and everything works to perfection "in windows". I can get into the BIOS but it takes a lot of tapping for it to happen, no amount of tapping of F12 will get to the boot menu, this tells me something is still not right but what do you guys think?

 

[Rich-M]

The dvd drive could be bad or dying Mike. BTW you did hold out the cmos battery right? That could have reset the bios so there may be a perfectly valid reason everything now works.Let them run it until it dies it may be fine.

 

[mikehende]

I left the cmos out for 7 minutes or so, when I restarted everything was the same, I restarted a couple of times after that then it started recognizing the disk.

 

[Rich-M]

Maybe the actual power button is the issue, I would check it out and all the wires attached including jumper to the motherboard.