Unable to boot Dell Inspiron 6400 from CD/USB

[adiel91]

Hey guys.
trying to reinstall windows on dell inspiron 6400.

i've connected the hd to another computer and formatted it from there.
re-connected it to my dell laptop and trid booting into windows xp installation from CD.
nothing happanes.
no "press any key to boot from cd" appears.
tried setting boot sequence in bios and also with quick boot menu selecting cd/dvd drive.

the xp disc is perfectly fine, tried booting from it in other laptop - works great.

tried also booting from usb flash drive - same thing, no message, nothing happens.
although in other laptop there was no problem booting from the same usb drive.

any ideas?
kind of lost here.
tried resetting the bios to its factory settings, didn;t help.

thanks

 

[Alabalcho]

When you start your laptop, immediately after BIOS, press (couple of times) F12, this is "Boot selector" menu.

You can also "fool" the setup from this other computer. Return the disk on other computer,start setup, there, and stop after first reboot. Move disk over to the laptop, an continue from there.

 

[adiel91]

Alabalcho -
tried from F12 boot selector menu - no luck as well.

anonymous1 -
i thought at first that the dvd drive is bad, but then i tried booting from usb
with no luck as well

 

[Dell_Amrinder]

Hi adiel91,

The troubleshooting you have done so far looks good to me. We can try a few more steps and then try and reinstall the Operating system.

1. Go to System BIOS and disable Integrated Audio and Integrated network card.
2. If you have two memory cards installed, you can remove one of them and try and initiate the OSRI with just one memory card installed.
3. The last step would be to remove the hard drive from the computer and then try and initiate OSRI so as to confirm the functionality of the Optical drive.

Regards
Amrinder D
Social Outreach Professional

 

[adiel91]

did you make the USB flash drive bootable like this?

http/www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

hey,
my bootable usb was made using Win2Flash app.
also, checked it in other laptop, its perfectly bootable indeed ;-)

 

[adiel91]

Hi adiel91,

The troubleshooting you have done so far looks good to me. We can try a few more steps and then try and reinstall the Operating system.

1. Go to System BIOS and disable Integrated Audio and Integrated network card.
2. If you have two memory cards installed, you can remove one of them and try and initiate the OSRI with just one memory card installed.
3. The last step would be to remove the hard drive from the computer and then try and initiate OSRI so as to confirm the functionality of the Optical drive.

Regards
Amrinder D
Social Outreach Professional

Hey,
tried all of the above just now - nothing works.
not even when removing the hard drive - it won't boot neither from the optical drive nor the usb flash key.
also, i ran system diagnostic (in f12 boot menu)
and the optical drive test passed with no errors

thanks

 

[Dell_Amrinder]

Hi adiel91,

Thanks for the response and apologies for the delay on my part.

If the system is not booting from either the optical drive or the USB key even if the hard drive is disconnected. It definitely points to a failure with the motherboard.

Regards
Amrinder D
Social Outreach Professional