PCTech Forums

Hi, I have a Dell Xps 400, The hard drive failed and I installed a new one. A Western Digital 1Tb. I put the reinstallation cd in the cd and when starting up pc all I get is a black screen with cursor flashing. I've tried holding del key when starting and all the f keys with no response at all. I even changed the jumper on the cd from cable to master and nothing happened. I can tell the hard drive is spinning and the cd spins up also. All I can think of that I probably did wrong was before removing the old hard drive I should have changed the pc to boot from cd. What can I do now. Thanks alot for any help

Hazy,

Let's start with the basics first.

Try disconnecting the new hard drive completely and then boot up the system, you should now see a message about no boot device available.
If you don't get anything on the screen then the problem is not the HD setup.

According to dell after POST F12 will get you the boot device menu and F2 will get you into the BIOS.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... #wp1043338

Ok tried booting up with hard drive removed. Still black screen with cursor...

Hazy,

Will there must be something else causing the system to not boot.
Look for anything that could be causing a short like a screw or something, between the motherboard and the case.

You could also try removing one of your ram sticks and see if it will boot then.

It's a process of elimination at this point, remove one peripheral item at a a time and see if it will boot.

Ok I pulled out a stick of ram and I was able to get into the setup utility and run the installation disk. Now when the pc starts up it says that it can't find floppy disk 1, hit f1 to continue or f2 to enter setup. When I try to change the boot up sequence to hard drive first it asks me for administrators password because it is locked. When I was installing windows it asked me for a pw, but when I try to use it, it tells me it is wrong. I can use the f1 key and get into windows, btw thanks so much for the help, very much appreciated.

Hazy,

I'm glad you got the system to load windows.

The password you are being asked for is not your windows password it would be a BIOS password.
If you don't know this password then you can clear all passwords using a jumper on the motherboard.
Full instructions can be found here:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... #wp1053659