A friend has an old dell centrino, with an unbootable hd. Not being used to propritory boxes, mine are all home built.So anyway I formatted the hd on my windows unit and did a clean install of windows on it, it boots and runs on my unit,but when reinstalled on the Dell it will not boot and the monitor goes into an auto adjust mode and stays there. any help thoughts?

Try going to Yahoo Answers, because if it does not have to do with SETI or BOINC, we really don't have a clue.

And there are two problems with what you did:

1) The screen resolution is way too high for his monitor. Turn it to the lowest setting.

2) Windows won't boot because it detected that it is in a different computer. This keeps people from abusing the licensing system. The install must happen on his computer.

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30+ Computers heading our way! Currently at the "Zomg we need to talk to our tech expert at the co-op about this first!!!" stage. 16 Lab machines and 14+ Staff machines each with 2.2Ghz CPUs and 256MB ram. Think they balance? The RAM certainly is bad

we really don't have a clue.


you could hve stopped there.
My friend wanted to run boinc on his unit.

Well, you would first have to at the very least solve the Windows problem; the operating system MUST be installed with the Hard Drive IN the machine it will live in.

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30+ Computers heading our way! Currently at the "Zomg we need to talk to our tech expert at the co-op about this first!!!" stage. 16 Lab machines and 14+ Staff machines each with 2.2Ghz CPUs and 256MB ram. Think they balance? The RAM certainly is bad

Never had any problem switching hds between my many machines, they are all home built not branded, must load mb drivers ,but thats about it.The dell has no way to access the bios, cannot choose boot priority, neither hds or cd.

Never had any problem switching hds between my many machines, they are all home built not branded, must load mb drivers ,but thats about it.The dell has no way to access the bios, cannot choose boot priority, neither hds or cd.

It does have a way to access the BIOS. But, the display to tell you about it can be turned off. You can try this link: http://michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm to see which BIOS access is right for his computer.

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BOINC WIKI

When you go from your machines to a dell, the motherboard changes.

The dell should have come with a OS CD. Use that CD WITH the Dell machine, and you should not even need a code or activation.

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30+ Computers heading our way! Currently at the "Zomg we need to talk to our tech expert at the co-op about this first!!!" stage. 16 Lab machines and 14+ Staff machines each with 2.2Ghz CPUs and 256MB ram. Think they balance? The RAM certainly is bad

yes, different bios on each computer. just do a fresh install on the hd with the dell cent computer. to be honest, any install cd will do the trick, any extra drivers such as audio drivers, and internet drivers can be dled to a flash drive and transferred to the computer that needs them. i've had to do this before. dell website has all drivers for their products and systems, just got to go find them.

F2 at the boot logo screen is the way into the BIOS for most newer Dells.

If that doesn't work, try hitting the ESC key at the logo screen to switch to the normal POST screen to see what the hotkey is. A helper can be handy for this due to the screen not hanging around too long. If you're quick enough, Pause/Break can stop the display so you have more time to determine what the hotkey is.

Alinator

F2 at the boot logo screen is the way into the BIOS for most newer Dells.

If that doesn't work, try hitting the ESC key at the logo screen to switch to the normal POST screen to see what the hotkey is. A helper can be handy for this due to the screen not hanging around too long. If you're quick enough, Pause/Break can stop the display so you have more time to determine what the hotkey is.

Alinator

The link I found indicated that, depending on the model, F1, F2, F3, or DEL are likely for Dell computer.

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BOINC WIKI

dell website has all drivers for their products and systems, just got to go find them.

Actually, just read the Dell Service Tag # off the back, then support.dell.com will take you right to everything based on that. Probably grab everything just to have on hand.

If it was me (and it's not), as a first step I'd blank the new HD (clobber the partition table), and use a bootable install CD for Full Windows (boot order should not matter, just make sure you read the screen messages that come across and re-act in time). If the other machine wasn't the same processor class (Centrino was a campaign, not a processor), you've no idea what the ripple could be in moving the HD over.

Oh, and if you do this kind of thing a lot (helping friends with their in-op hardware), you might want to burn yerself a copy of UltimateBootCD and play around with the diagnostics just to make sure you're not trying to resurrect a machine with a wonky CPU or flakey memory.

Best Luck ! (Boinc Luck, I guess)

You did not say what version of Windows you installed but guessing it's XP and you just bumped into Microsofts protection klunkiness ... see --> http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php .... swapping the drives between boxes caused the "score" to change by too much and MS balks and won't boot.

A few thoughts..

If the machine doesn't display the 'F2' for bios, just start hitting the likely keys. F1, F2, F10, Del etc.

The non-boot is not a copy protection problem, it's non-compatible drivers. The machine tries to boot using the drivers from the machine it was installed on, but the Dell probably has a totally different chipset and video card, and just locks up. If they are close enough it will boot, find new devices and maybe ask for drivers.

THEN you might get into Windows activation problems.

Best option, wipe the disk and do a setup on the Dell. That will at least get Windows running. Then you can sort out the drivers and Windows activation issues.

Otherwise - get hold of a Ubuntu Linux CD and install that, it will actually be easier.

Ian

F2 at the boot logo screen is the way into the BIOS for most newer Dells.

If that doesn't work, try hitting the ESC key at the logo screen to switch to the normal POST screen to see what the hotkey is. A helper can be handy for this due to the screen not hanging around too long. If you're quick enough, Pause/Break can stop the display so you have more time to determine what the hotkey is.

Alinator

DEL works as well

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Nobody is nobody. Everyone has something to offer

dell website has all drivers for their products and systems, just got to go find them.

Actually, just read the Dell Service Tag # off the back, then support.dell.com will take you right to everything based on that. Probably grab everything just to have on hand.

If it was me (and it's not), as a first step I'd blank the new HD (clobber the partition table), and use a bootable install CD for Full Windows (boot order should not matter, just make sure you read the screen messages that come across and re-act in time). If the other machine wasn't the same processor class (Centrino was a campaign, not a processor), you've no idea what the ripple could be in moving the HD over.

Oh, and if you do this kind of thing a lot (helping friends with their in-op hardware), you might want to burn yerself a copy of UltimateBootCD and play around with the diagnostics just to make sure you're not trying to resurrect a machine with a wonky CPU or flakey memory.

Best Luck ! (Boinc Luck, I guess)

10 points for suggesting the UBD!

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Nobody is nobody. Everyone has something to offer

Got into bios thanks.Enabled post messages.Attempting to boot from cd..etc for diskette A and hardrive. Tryed unbuntu, nothing, perhaps bad cdrom...? hardrive should have nothing to do .with not booting unbuntu...

I know from the old dellcommunity.com-pages that some users got problems if they tried to install a linux on a pc from dell.

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I have had no problem installing Linux on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, boots just fine from the CD's.

Currently I have it set up for dual booting into either XP or Fedora.

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Hi
I have run into the same problem different bios behave differently. I have used Ubuntu on my Dell laptop no problem. You can format the HDD and then put it back into the laptop and then install the OS and it should be ok.

Maybe you should try some basic diagnostics first.
Download the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic" from Western Digital and create the bootable floppy or CD and run the diagnostics on the drive to be sure the hd and controller is "physicly" ok.
Their are some similar tools from nearly every hd manufacturer like IBMs "Drive Fitness Tool" or Seagates "Sea Tools".

Second you can write zeros all over the drive with the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic" tool, so you will get a hd like fresh from the manufactorer.
This will be very helpful if the former Microsoft installation messed up the masterbootrecord and especialy the partition tables. I have had three of this "bad" hds in the last 12 Months - they frezze the system at boottime, even booting form cd/floppy/usb-stick :-(.
Could only bring them back to life with this lowlevel-format.
After this you should be able to create new partitions and format them with every system installation cd you want.

Good luck for your bits and bytes.

__W__

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