Will Not Boot Even With Disc

Friend of mine gave me his Dell tower to check out. I know it's a 64 bit system but I don't know the model (don't they put model numbers on the chassis anymore?).

I just goes into a perpetual boot loop when you turn it on. Hitting the Repair Your Computer (instead of Start Windows Normally) option just takes me to a grayish screen. So I put in the Windows Home Prem. 64 disc getting the 'press any key.... Then I get the 'Loading Files', I get the Starting Windows and then the Install Windows screen. If I select 'Repair' it just goes to that blueish screen with the branch and the little bird, and stays there. Two hours later and it hasn't moved.

If I select Install (instead of Repair), it takes me to that same blue screen with the white words 'Setup is starting'. This screen also never goes away.

If it was a hard drive problem wouldn't it have taken me to the OS screen selection where it would normally display Windows 7 Home Premium, but in the case of a bad drive it would say no OS found?

Boot the dvdand instead of install goto the repair cmd prompt then type chkdsk c: /r see if it will check the disk for errors

samuria said:

Boot the dvdand instead of install goto the repair cmd prompt then type chkdsk c: /r see if it will check the disk for errors

AIAS, "I put in the Windows Home Prem. 64 disc getting the 'press any key.... Then I get the 'Loading Files', I get the Starting Windows and then the Install Windows screen. If I select 'Repair' it just goes to that blueish screen with the branch and the little bird, and stays there. Two hours later and it hasn't moved."

SIW2 said:

Check if the install media will boot without the hard drive attached.

If I disconnect the HDD and boot from the disc I do get the System Recovery Options page. Of course there is no operating system listed, but the page does display. Reconnecting the drive and restarting yields the same results as above - no System Recovery Options ever shows up.

SIW2 said:

Tht indicates a problem with the drive, the controller, or (possibly) the connection.

You could try reconnecting the drive using a different sata port and lead. If you still have the problem, your drive/controller is bad.

Simplest is then to get a new hd and clean install. If you want to get data off the old drive you could attempt slaving it and using various file recovery programs. Failing that, if the data is very important you could consider a specialist company who do that stuff ( expensive).

I tried a different SATA power connector without result. I have to look around to another SATA data cable. If I connect the drive to another PC with a USB caddy I can read the data and save it to an ext. drive. But at this point I don't know if the problem is the drive itself or something faulty on the motherboard. I'd certainly hate to buy a new drive and be unable to install the OS because of a mobo problem.

boweasel said:

I tried a different SATA power connector without result. I have to look around to another SATA data cable. If I connect the drive to another PC with a USB caddy I can read the data and save it to an ext. drive. But at this point I don't know if the problem is the drive itself or something faulty on the motherboard. I'd certainly hate to buy a new drive and be unable to install the OS because of a mobo problem.

If you could access and read the HDD on another PC, I would say that the HDD itself is OK.

What is left for you is to try it in its original location - the Dell Tower -with another SATA Cable and another port. If it wouldn't boot still then most probably the motherboard is faulty.

Try with another HDD and with the good HDD also it exhibits the same problem, it would confirm the motherboard is defective.

Contact DELL support and check whether they would undertake motherboard repair.If not another professional service agency.

You can try to read the disk with Linux on a USB flash disk.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/re...sktop-i386.iso

To make a USB flash boot able use Rufus Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way