Dell Dimension 8300 Problems Installing New WinXp Help Needed

I have rescued an orphaned Dell Dimension 8300 that was slated for the
dumpster. It has powered up fine,I could boot into bios no problem, but it
would not boot into an OS environment (assuming it had one loaded). I
pulled the drive and opened it on another machine. All was working well
(and it did have WinXp present) so I reformtted the drive and reinstalled
into the dell case.

My intention was to install a fresh WinXp Home on the Dell system. The
problem is the process will not start. It simply goes to a bios style
screen indicating select F1 for proceeding with setup or F2 for bios.
Hitting F1 just keeps bringing up the request and never proceeds past this
point. By the way I have no drivers or dell supplied software.

I have never had any experience with dell products having generally built my
own systems. I guessing there may be some restriction that Dell has in
place to prevent "private" OS installs (those without there software
present).

Any help would be appreicated, and if all else fails I will just part the
unit. But I have a grandaughter that would love a system like this as it
would be an upgrade for her.

Thank you for any help offered.

No special restrictions imposed by Dell, or special software or drivers required
to install XP. The drive has to be jumpered correctly as cable select, and it
has to be cabled properly. If it is the pirmary master, then the corresponding
BIOS setting must be "Auto". Finally, set the boot order to boot from CD
first, then from the hard drive. If you have done all that, the hard drive
should be detected, the Windows CD should boot, and you are on your way.

After completing the Windows install, you will need to download and install all
the additional drivers required from the Dell web site... Ben Myers

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 02:49:50 GMT, wrote:

>I have rescued an orphaned Dell Dimension 8300 that was slated for the
>dumpster. It has powered up fine,I could boot into bios no problem, but it
>would not boot into an OS environment (assuming it had one loaded). I
>pulled the drive and opened it on another machine. All was working well
>(and it did have WinXp present) so I reformtted the drive and reinstalled
>into the dell case.
>
> My intention was to install a fresh WinXp Home on the Dell system. The
> problem is the process will not start. It simply goes to a bios style
> screen indicating select F1 for proceeding with setup or F2 for bios.
> Hitting F1 just keeps bringing up the request and never proceeds past this
> point. By the way I have no drivers or dell supplied software.
>
>I have never had any experience with dell products having generally built my
>own systems. I guessing there may be some restriction that Dell has in
>place to prevent "private" OS installs (those without there software
>present).
>
>Any help would be appreicated, and if all else fails I will just part the
>unit. But I have a grandaughter that would love a system like this as it
>would be an upgrade for her.
>
>Thank you for any help offered.

Thank you for the reply Ben. I did have it set up as you indicated, but it
will not initiate action. The drive is detected.

Hit F12 at the dell splash screen and choose boot from Cd option
<> wrote in message
news:ETkQh.200103$ m...
> Thank you for the reply Ben. I did have it set up as you indicated, but
> it
> will not initiate action. The drive is detected.

<> wrote in message
news:ihjQh.184506$ m...
>I have rescued an orphaned Dell Dimension 8300 that was slated for the
> dumpster. It has powered up fine,I could boot into bios no problem, but
> it
> would not boot into an OS environment (assuming it had one loaded). I
> pulled the drive and opened it on another machine. All was working well
> (and it did have WinXp present) so I reformtted the drive and reinstalled
> into the dell case.
>
> My intention was to install a fresh WinXp Home on the Dell system. The
> problem is the process will not start. It simply goes to a bios style
> screen indicating select F1 for proceeding with setup or F2 for bios.
> Hitting F1 just keeps bringing up the request and never proceeds past this
> point. By the way I have no drivers or dell supplied software.


That machine is worth keeping with enough RAM and hard disk space. I have
one here.

What message appears along with the F1 prompt?

That F1 prompt indicates BIOS sees some problem (ie- low battery voltage,
event log entries, hard disk not found, etc).

Focus on whatever error appears prior to/with the F1 prompt.


Stew