[Ztruker]

How is your hard drive setup? Raid, AHCI or IDE?

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sorry but I'm not sure? Will try to figure that out and post again

edit: when going into system information>storage
get the following: drives, disks, scsi, ide

believe the setup is Ide if I did this correctly

Edited by nehac, 25 August 2011 - 05:21 PM.

[nehac]

sorry but I'm not sure? Will try to figure that out and post again

edit: when going into system information>storage
get the following: drives, disks, scsi, ide

believe the setup is Ide if I did this correctly

Edited by nehac, 25 August 2011 - 05:21 PM.

[Ztruker]

Sorry, I did not provide enough info for you.

This setting will be in BIOS Setup, not under Windows. See this thread for similar problem and how they fixed it. Dell Inspiron 531s not seeing sata drive

[nehac]

Thank you for the link. Here is the info (hope I got the correct one now)

Serial-ATA Configuration
SATA Controller [sata- 1+2]
RAID Enabled [disabled]
xsata1 primary raid [disabled]
xsata1 secondary raid [disabled]
xsata 2 primary raid [disabled]
xsata 2 secondary raid [disabled]
--------------------------------------------

Looking back, I believe this issue started occurring after I had installed the driver updates (these were found through the dell website using my service tag)
These were installed last Nov/Dec. They have not been done since then (dell only shows the ones I installed and no newer updates)

Could this be the culprit?
Originally the issue would only occur maybe once or twice a week. But was resolved. But now it is occurring every time I startup the computer

Edited by nehac, 26 August 2011 - 09:57 AM.

[Ztruker]

What driver updates did you install? You could try going into Device Manager, double clicking on the device you updated the driver for then click on the Drive tab then the Rollback button.

[nehac]

There were actually a few including the bios...
The ones which have the roll back option:

Display adaptor
Nvidia Geforce 6150se nforce430

Storage controller:
Nvidia nforce serial ata-controller

Do you think doing these may resolve the issue?

[Ztruker]

You could try them both, starting with

Storage controller:
Nvidia nforce serial ata-controller

[nehac]

Tried both and when the system restarted got the same message.
Now, I tried going back in to the boot priority and making the hard drive first, and then cd rom. Seemed to load okay this time.

Will post again in the morning after turning on the computer

[nehac]

Was fine yesterday. Reinstalled the updates 1 by 1, and everything seems to be good for now .

[nehac]

Once again the problem has returned . Retried using the cd to fix start up but it did nothing.

Really getting frustrated with this now

[nehac]

do you have any more suggestions?

[Digerati]

Hi nehac. Sorry to hear you are having so many problems. Rich had some personal issues take him away from his volunteer "duties" here and asked if I help.

Not sure I have much more to offer, as it seems like you have tried just about everything.

I might suggest, however, that instead of simply resetting the BIOS (pulling the motherboard battery), since they only cost a couple dollars, I am going to suggest you insert a new battery. Just about any camera/watch/battery counter will have the one you need (typically a CR2032) but I recommend you take the old one with you as most battery counters will recycle the old one - a good thing.

Make sure you unplug the computer from the wall and touch bare metal of the case before reaching in to discharge any static in your body. Don't touch the new battery with bare skin as skin oils promote corrosion and attract dust.

[nehac]

Thank you, will give this a try

[nehac]

Hi I have yet to replace the battery.

Just a thought though... I have had an external hard drive plugged into the computer for over 2years now. Just tired unplugging it to see if the computer may boot up normally. Turns out it did...
Not sure if that external hard drive might have anything to do with it, or the normal startup being a coincidence.

[Digerati]

Not sure if that external hard drive might have anything to do with it, or the normal startup being a coincidence.

I guess you could plug it back in and find out. If it messes up again, it could indicate a problem with the enclosure, or with the port it is connected to.