Dell Optiplex Wi
Dell optiplex 320 with two operating systems need help?
i have a dell optiplex 320 i bought used.when i boot it up its always says press f1 to continue f2 for set up.....i cant do a system restore hard drive..because the screnn goes to the f1 thing ..someone had tried or something putting a second operating system on it but it is not usefull it doesnt work..so i get theat screen press f1 or f2 for set up..wi cant get to the factory restore settings because of this,,how ta heck can you get rid of the non exixting system or disable it or something.. i dont have the disc thats why iwas tring to do a hard drive factory system restore..thanks steve
There is no error repoterd it just boots to that..the second operating system is xp but not there but there..no messages are displayed
dell does have a factrory restore by oushing ctrl f11 at the small dell logo at first boot..stored on a partiton on the hard drive.!
It sounds like your Dell is not finding a boot loader, and therefore doesn't know what to do after going through its initial start-up routines.
There are two basic causes for this:
1) the BIOS (setup screens, accessible via F2) is set to boot from some device other than the built-in hard drive. This is not likely, because if it can't find a bootloader from the first device specified in the BIOS, it generally drops to the next choice, and then the next choice. So unless the hard drive has been removed from that list of choices, I would think it would eventually find the hard drive and boot from it.
2) the bootloader on the hard drive is corrupt/missing. The only way to fix this is to repair it using whatever operating system's bootloader you wish to use. This is probably the situation.
I've never seen a Dell that has a "hard drive factory system restore" built into the system; it always requires a System Restore CD (or some equivalent external system, not built-in). If you don't have that System Restore CD, you're hosed. You'll either have to get one from Dell (or beg/borrow one from someone that has one for your model of computer), or you'll have to manually rebuild the system software.
At this point, unless you want to pirate the necessary software, or buy it, (or talk Dell into giving it to you), you might be better off to get that other OS working. I suspect someone has tried to install Linux as the other OS (although it could be another version of Windows, or a hacked copy of OS/X, or FreeBSD, or any number of lesser-known OSes). There's plenty of geeks around now who would know how to get Linux working for you, and by fixing that, they might even get Windows working for you again (assuming it's just the bootloader missing, and not the entire Windows system and/or partition).
In short, you will probably either have to get someone knowledgeable about dual-booting and/or reinstalling Windows involved, or will have to undergo a crash-course in learning to do this stuff yourself.
Alternatively, you could forego Windows altogether and download the free Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) or Knoppix (www.knoppix.com) or other similar Linux and install it without worrying about saving your Windows setup. Both of those Linux distros are pretty easy to get up and going nowadays.
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