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New Hard Drive, slight problem


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#16
Hanspuppa

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My computer is a Dell XPS710, 2 GB Ram
Board: Dell Inc. 0UY253 A00
Serial Number: ..CN1374073900TK.
Bus Clock: 1066 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. 1.4.1 05/07/2007

EDIT: I went into BIOS , HD section, and turned off the second SATA port that had nothing installed and it seems to have solved my F1 problem. I've rebooted several times and NO "hit F1". I've learned something. :-) BUT this brings me back to my original problem.

I bought a new 500gb HD to add to my computer and cloned it with the original 250 GB HD. This worked successfully. I put the new HD in the same spot as the original HD and used the same connecting wires. I put the original HD in an empty HD slot and connected it up. Both HD's of course were now bootable drives but the computer apparently couldn't decide which to use (?)

Now, how can I get computer to bbot off new HD realizing that I can't tell BIOS which HD to use?


Your system is a very nice system. As happyrock suggested, the boot drive should be connected to the number one SATA port. It will work on other ports, but that is not the preferred configuration as per Dell support.

Your F1 error seems to have been the SATA port being enabled with no device cnnected to it. This happens quite often. All SATA ports with no devices connected should be disabled.

Now that the F1 error has been addressed, to get the boot drive in order, select the boot device in the BIOS. Usually the onboard CD\DVD drive is set as the first device and the boot hard drive as the second boot device. Determine which drive you want as your boot drive and make sure it is connected to the SATA port one. Then in the boot order, select the SATA port one as the second boot device. Save the settings and reboot. If there is no disk in the optical drive, the system should boot to the SATA port one hard drive.

You can connect the second hard drive to the SATA port two, making sure the SATA two port is enabled and making sure it is not the second boot device. You may have issues with dual booting, since both hard drives have an OS installed on them.

If you don't want dual booting, you would need to make some more adjustments to the OS and the boot manager. This is another issue that can be dealt with, but you should get the system to boot and work as you want it to, first.

Hope this is not too confusing and is helpful.

Edited by Hanspuppa, 19 December 2009 - 11:03 AM.

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#17
happyrock

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after your booted up ...
Right click on My Computer... and then Properties... click on Advanced tab....
In the Startup and Recovery section then Settings... Click the Edit button.

notepad will open boot.ini... Copy and paste it here for us...
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#18
Hanspuppa

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Hello Impala1ss, Let me apologize for not asking this earlier, and it may have been already asked, but which operating system are you using?

The reason I ask, is that Windows XP uses one boot manager, and Vista and Windows 7 uses another.

As happyrock, suggest, if you are using Windows XP, the boot.ini file determines the boot order of the OS, depending on how it is configured.

Vista and Windows 7 uses a bootmgr, which is totally different.

Since boot.ini is a simple text file, it can be ediited in Wordpad or Notepad to accomplish the boot of the system, from the operating system's point of view.

Vista and Windows 7 however, cannot be edited in this manner, but requires an application, BcdEdit, or EasyBCD 1.7.2 to accomplish this.

You can Google both of these for download information.

I didn't want to include links to other sites in this Forum.

Hope this helps.

Edited by Hanspuppa, 19 December 2009 - 01:23 PM.

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#19
Impala1ss

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after your booted up ...
Right click on My Computer... and then Properties... click on Advanced tab....
In the Startup and Recovery section then Settings... Click the Edit button.

notepad will open boot.ini... Copy and paste it here for us...



[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin
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#20
Impala1ss

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bump
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#21
Impala1ss

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ttt
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