Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Dell Studio XPS 9000 will not boot

by dkcobbs Nov 5, 2012 2:10AM PST

I have a Dell Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 - approximately 3 years old

When I press the power button the screen shows the first startup screen with the dell logo and option to press F2 for Set Up or F12 for boot options. Following that sceen, the cursor blink moves to the top left of the screen - otherwise blank screen, the computer will make one short beep then beep a second time - the second beep is constant and does not stop and nothing further happens (excpet the coninuation of the beep) until the computer is turned off.

I have pressed F12 and run all of the Dell pre boot diagnostics and everything tests positive with no errors. I have two ITB hard disks and have run all the preboot tests including the long test and confidence test on them (3+ hours each) and everything tests fine. The processor test and mother board test also come out fine. The preboot diagnostics finds all installed equipement. I have not added any new hardware or software recently. Problem occured out of the blue. No electrical storms or other know potentail issues.

I have also pressed F2 on startup and all setup settings appear correct.

When I press F12 and boot windows from CD, windows loads, asks for language etc. When it requrests to repair established installation, the only hardware it seems to find is the CD drive from which it boots - it does not locate the hard drives. I'm not sure why the preboot diagnositcs find both hard drives and test them as fine but to reinstall windows the hard drives are not found.

I am hesitent to take to repair shop because I'm a CPA and the hard disk has about a dozen tax returns without any seperate password security.

Any ideas?

Discussion is locked

1 Posts

- Collapse + Expand Details

- Collapse -

Sounds like a boot record issue.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Nov 5, 2012 2:16AM PST

And such is NEVER fixed if the owner has yet to backup what's on said drives. But once they are sure their files are safe I'd look at booting a Windows 7 DVD and using the usual boot repair commands. I have used EasyBCD (see google about that as there are tutorials I don't duplicate here) but what's very important is that the files are safe first.
Bob

Back to Computer Help forum