Phill more for my benefit than yours but also to ensure that you have all of the information.
RECAP
The unit recently suffered a PSU failure, the OEM and was replaced without issue, and on advice the BIOS re-flashed.
The problem; this unit has had its operating system upgraded from windows vista to Windows 7 and then more recently to Windows 10, with the addition of MS Office 2016 Pro. All appeared to be functioning well for a number of months, with the unit being used daily for domestic correspondence,video conferencing,report writing, PowerPoint presentations, photographic editing, music conversion and film conversion, all of which it carried out well. Until, a household power failure occurred, and then the unit would not proceed beyond the DELL Bootscreen do the DOS screens.
The unit has only the OS and operating software required for the task installed, all documents, and photographs are held on USB connected Hard Drives.
Within the last 36 hours all connections between the motherboard and the installed additional items, graphics card,CPU, disk drives, combination drives, PSU and hard drives have bee removed and both sets of contacts cleaned, using lint free cloths and a task specific proprietary cleaning solution.
All connections then re-made and the unit powered up. Note that at all times during this process anti static procedures were followed.
As I do not possess an "Avo" successful " power to item" has been assessed visually.
All DVD drive bays open and close as expected and with a disk in the drive the drive can be heard to "spin up".
USB ports have been "proved" by the connection do an external DVD drive which has an operating installation/power on light, and with a disk in the drive the drive can be heard "spinning up"
PSU seems to be providing power in view of the above, also the PSU fan operates and the motherboard indication lights illuminate, as does the Internet connection.
Hard drives (1x Seagate BArracuda 320 GB 1x Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB) appear to vibrate (to the touch) when power is applied, however this could be vibration being transmitted through the chassis of the unit from the PSU.
Graphics card appears to be operating as the onboard fan operates and monitor shows DELL boot screen and DOS screens.
CPU is presumed to be working as when power is switched on the PC progresses to the DELL boot screen (photo1) therefore startup protocols must be running and to a point be effective.
On boot up PC hangs at DELL boot screen and then the following screen is accessed after the F1 key is pressed (photo 2).
And on pressing the F2 key the following blue screen , after scrolling down to the drives list (photo3).
A number of attempts have been made to reorder the boot sequence without success and rebooting from a USB pen drive with the current Windows 10 ISO has also failed.
Presumption is that if all other elements are working then the problem may lie in the Hard drives, either one, or both, if this is so replacement of the hard drives is a possibility but, which type, replace like for like, or add one or two Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives?
However why does the system display that non of the drives can be found?
How or why does the system display RAID 0 and what precisely does this mean, and how can this affect the operation of the unit in the future?
Best regards
Jim
Edited by Jb852, 15 January 2018 - 05:45 AM.
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