Hi everybody My name is Kain and normally i would not be asking for help. see the thing is I got this Dell Optiplex Gx300 and i want to get it up and running, It has two 10 Gb HDD that load up, but the issue is Installing Win xp or win2k upoon them, See The bios will not recognize any Cd rom drive i have tried, And ive tried six of them, all 6 with different configs such as master, slave, secondary slave and even Cable select, two drives are from pcs of similar orgins, one is a Liteon dvd rom/cdrw and the others i couldnt even tell you were i got them, I need to get this pc up and running, its a gift for my uncle before he moves home, I was wondering if anyone had any advice, and Wondering if its poosible to install a Os on on of the Hd's via another pc then swap it back to the Optiplex and see if it would work, and if so, what Would i need to do so. thanks in advance if you can help.
10GB HD is not enough to load windows you will have to get a larger HD you will need at least 40GB what os systm is on the computer at the presant time you will need at least 128MB of RAM and that will make the computer run slow with winXP
Run on sentence much? . Actually, Windows XP states in its system requirements that 1.5GB are needed for installation. 10GB should work fine, depending on what you're doing. 128 MB is minimum in RAM, but even that low is workable (use TweakXP and the 2000 visual style and that'll lower the amount needed just for the OS visuals). I don't know what you're planning to do with this, but good luck. As for your question, are they not recognized, or can you just not boot from them?
Make sure you're doing it right... I'd check your cables. ATA slot 1 can have 2 devices, if there is only one device it should be set to master. If there is a second it should be set to slave. Cable select is a pain in the ass. ATA slot 2 can support 2 devices, same as above. if there is one device on each plug, each should be set to master. If there is 1 hd and 1 cd rom on a plug, the HDD should be set to master, the CD drive to slave. Please be aware that master can usually be achieved by removing all jumpers from the device. Check your cables, check your pins, try again. Optimal config: 1 hd master and 1 cdrom slave on ATA1. 1 hd master on ATA2. Oh yea, and edit: I've got xp running as a server on several PII 350's in my living room, each has a 4gb hdd and 128mb of RAM. Pish tosh on needing 40gigs.
The hdd's and cd roms are on two seperate ide cables and ports not one, i already tried setting up ever possible config i could, it simple wont work, No matter what I try, Perhaps, i should stop making 2-3 pc's into one, or stop keeping parts XD<_<( I have over 15 Hdd's, 12 cd drives, 4 dvd rom drives, 6 cdr drives, 17 floopy drives, 5 cases, 30 powersupplys, all Powersupplys work to goddamn lol)
Have you checked the BIOS to make sure that is is set to automatically detect IDE devices, or are the devices set to Disabled? Double check all your BIOS settings, then move on to cabling(switching to known good cables, etc) and stuff. Good luck. ~Rich
Make sure your cables are good... I had something similar happen to me after trying the 3rd HD, I tested the cable and it was bad. Also check the pins on the board. Try the simple stuff first. It saves headaches.
Just recently worked on 5 brand new dells. not sure if they're the same as yours but you actually have to turn on each device on each cable. if you have them all on with no devices it will tell you that it can not find those 4 devices. I would say check bios settings. Every thing else was pretty much already said. OH BY THE WAY i have an acient ibm laptop pentium 2 300MHz running XP. It has the tiniest hard drive with 256mb memory. this little devil runs like a champ. And if i do remember, i beleive the actual bare minimum for XP is 64mb, but i could be wrong. Granted i only use it to surf the internet, work in office, and watch movies(not at the same time). definitly adjust the visuals b/c it gives that small system every possible resource that is availible.
checked cables, there all good, they work on my other towers, checked bios(many a times) no luck, did the single device switch, nothing at all, the last time I tried doing this i spent 4 weeks racking my brain, and lost 200 dollars in the process, I know the board is still good, bios is fine, it loads the Hd's and all other things, just for some reason, it hates every single cd drive i have and ive tried 9 on it, some old, some new, some used, some not, and nothing, yet all the other pcs accept em.
