Installing Windows Question....

[sach2]

Doesn't seem to be booting from CD when in the DELL.

With the CD in the drive, during the Dell screen press F12 and choose to boot from CD. Give the exact error message.

[artistwantab]

I tried that before and still received the same error.

[sach2]

Tell us the specific error using F12 and selecting CD.

Is it "boot failure; system halted"
or "error loading operating system"

I'm thinking the "boot failure" means no bootable devices--so no HD nothing to boot from even though you have the CD available.

And the "error loading Os" message means that the specific CD is not bootable (for some reason).

I realize you have done this all before but am just trying to pin down why you can't get the basic Win2000 installation screens.

***
You said you have more than one machine are you experiencing the same error on multiple machines? Trying to eliminate a bad CDROM drive from the equation.

[plodr]

When the blue Dell logo appears, press <F12> immediately.
Use the arrow keys to select the CD-ROM option, and then press <Enter>.

Do you get a CD-ROM option? If not, this might indicate something is wrong with the optical drive.

There are a series of 4 diagnostic lights on the back. I'm curious if they are lit and what colors at each (they are labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) is showing.
The chart for a Dimension 4400 http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...es.htm#1101572

[plodr]

I did some looking and the size of the hd you want to install might also be a problem.
P4 size for HDD: if your Mobo has only ATA Support not SATA then the limit is 160GB

The Dell documentation notes: ATA-66 or ATA-100 Ultra DMA hard drive

[artistwantab]

Tell us the specific error using F12 and selecting CD.

Is it "boot failure; system halted"
or "error loading operating system"

It is "error loading operating system" when a hard drive is present.

When I unplug the hard drive or disable it it gives me the "boot failure..." error.

The external cd drive and boot disk works because both work when installed on my laptop.

When I press f12 is gives me the option of loading from the cd or hard drive. But something tells me even though it may see the cd drive it may not be working properly and so it automatically defaults to the hard drive.

I am going to pull the cd drive from another desktop and plug it in and see it it works.

******

As far as the hard drive.

This is exactly what I am trying to work....

Hitachi HDS722516VLAT20 160GB Hard Drive
The hard drive says....ata/ide?

[sach2]

So is the CDROM you are trying to use a USB drive? That would make a difference because the PC would call that a USB device not a CDROM. So it wouldn't be trying to boot from it unless you were set to boot from USB.

If you have an internal CDROM that should get you going. I would go ahead and try that.

[sach2]

I don't see support for USB booting in your BIOS so I don't think that is an option.

I did notice that LBA-48 support was included in BIOS version A03 (which you have) so I think the larger HD should be supported without problems.

[artistwantab]

Originally Posted by plodr

Do you get a CD-ROM option? If not, this might indicate something is wrong with the optical drive.

There are a series of 4 diagnostic lights on the back. I'm curious if they are lit and what colors at each (they are labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) is showing.
The chart for a Dimension 4400 http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...es.htm#1101572

All green...which mean everything is fine.

Sorry didn't see that till now.

[artistwantab]

Fixed it.

Even though the bios claimed it was seeing the cd it kept defaulting to the hard drive.

Thank you all for you help. I could not have solved this with your insight.

[artistwantab]

Originally Posted by sach2

I don't see support for USB booting in your BIOS so I don't think that is an option.

That was exactly the problem.

So even though the bios somehow saw the drive it would not allow me to boot from it.

If you could explain where you actually saw that in the bios it may help me in the future. So the original CD drive didn't work so I went to an external cd drive and when I saw it in the bios I moved on.

[foogoo]

Ok, just to check, this post has gotten long, the CD is set to boot first?
The last thing is to burn the disk on a different system or a different brand of cd, could be that drive just will not read it. Seen it happen.