Dead Dell Inspiron 8000 - Tech Support Forums

Gurnster · January 13th, 2006, 11:58 PM

I am helping out a friend by installing Windows XP on his Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop. He is retired and with limited funds so I went online and found a copy of Windows XP from eDirectSoftware.com. They claim that I was able to get it because it was overstock form Gateway and would not harm the computer. When I inserted the disk in the cd-rom and restarted the system, it would not start windows. Now all it will do is show the dell screen and then a flashing cursor in the upper left corner. I have tried windows 98 startup disks, ME startup disks and even XP startup disks. What do I do?

LaptopExtreme · January 14th, 2006, 03:21 AM

Is it a bootable CD? Also is your bios set to boot from cdrom? It should boot up properly.

Gurnster · January 14th, 2006, 01:26 PM

Yes it is supposed to be. It dosen't seem to matter what I insert in the drives, nothing will boot. I can't even get dos to come up. Only that blinking cursor.

LaptopExtreme · January 17th, 2006, 12:29 AM

Is it a real WinXP install CD and not a Gateway branded CD? What was wrong with the Dell laptop before these problems came about? Did the CDrom actually worked before all this? And of course, has it been dropped before the problems? I only ask because it's supposed to boot up properly... that is, if there was no hardware problems. I've also seen the CD drives dislodge due to dropping.

Gurnster · January 19th, 2006, 10:39 PM

I would like to thank you all, especially laptop extreme for your help. All I needed to do is press Crtl and F2 to access the bios, unselect all the boot drives except the cd rom drive, insert the disk and restart. The windows menu came up and asked if I wanted to repair or reload windows. I reloaded it, formating the hard drive, and all was fixed.
Thank you again and I'll remember you when I'm in the laptop market,
Gurnster