Vista issue

[katuuuz]

hey guys, how's everyone doing? what kind of post from me would this be if i didn't have a problem? i'm currently running windows vista on a dell inspiron 531s and i cannot access the boot sequence menu. (it says hit F12 on the dell splash screen but doing so still loads up vista). i remember a few people were running vista just hoping you could help a brother out.

[Brian Hoffman]

hey guys, how's everyone doing? what kind of post from me would this be if i didn't have a problem? i'm currently running windows vista on a dell inspiron 531s and i cannot access the boot sequence menu. (it says hit F12 on the dell splash screen but doing so still loads up vista). i remember a few people were running vista just hoping you could help a brother out.

Well to me this means one of two things... Either F12 access's the RECOVERY partition.. Or simply just prompts you to select a source for bootrecord...eg Floppy,Cd-rom,IDE 0,USB etc....

What are you trying to do?

[headkaze]

Most BIOS require you to press DEL to enter but if it really is F12, you may have to press the "F-Lock" key before pressing F12.

[katuuuz]

yeah it won't work anyways, i needed to hook up/modify a hard drive via IDE. only PCs in my house are SATA.

[shaunopp]

yeah it won't work anyways, i needed to hook up/modify a hard drive via IDE. only PCs in my house are SATA.

I'm running an Inspiron 531 with Vista and have no problems accessing the boot menu with F12 or setup with F2.

Only oddity I notice is that if i continue to hold in F12 after seeing 'Loading boot sequence' in the lower left it says ArcadeVGA bios and hangs. If I press in F12 and then let go when I see it's loading it works fine.

Are you seeing a message in the lower left corner that it's loading the boot menu? Have you tried a different keyboard to rule that out?

[LB11]

Is it a desktop or laptop? I just tried on my dell laptop and it loaded the boot menu without problem. Why don't you just load the bios and change the first boot device if you cant get it working. THen change it back when you are done.

[Brian Hoffman]

Ive seen Dells use F2,F10 and DEL to go into Bios.

Once in there goto diskmanagment and turn on auto detect for your IDE buses.

Once the pc sees the drive you may / may not be able to see the drive in windows explorer.

You may have to go into administration tools/ disk mamagment to assign a drive letter to it Fdisk and format.

Note: you need to do this before windows loads.. It may say somewhere what key to presss to enter setup

[headkaze]

No I don't think having a SATA drive matters, but you may need to set it's jumper to MASTER.

[katuuuz]

No I don't think having a SATA drive matters, but you may need to set it's jumper to MASTER.

man i love you guys, any other forum and i'd still be waiting on my first response hahaha. yes i thought it may be the keyboard too, i know how to get there/use bios/boot sequence, it's just not letting me. my key is F12.. i'm running off a desktop. it's either the keyboard, or could my bios be locked? i saw an article on the web about it but the thread didn't have a soloution.

kaze: i don't know if i can hook up the hard drive that needs modding because i don't see a IDE ribbon in the pc. just a molex supplying power to the hard drive, and what i'm guessing is a SATA chord. (blue).

[headkaze]

If it's a SATA drive then you don't use IDE ribbon cable you use a SATA cable which is about an cm wide and usually with a red plastic cover.

Changing the boot sequence is usually done in BIOS. DEL is usually the key for that. I doubt your BIOS is locked because that's only usually done by adding a password. The only thing I can suggest further is to try a PS/2 keyboard if your using a USB one. Again check your keyboard for "F-Lock" key, you might have to quickly press that before tapping F12.

[shaunopp]

i don't know if i can hook up the hard drive that needs modding because i don't see a IDE ribbon in the pc. just a molex supplying power to the hard drive, and what i'm guessing is a SATA chord. (blue).

My 531 doesn't have any IDE devices, only SATA. I just recently added a hard drive to mine and the setting to get it to recognize is in the BIOS setup under Advanced-->Serial-ATA Configuration-->SATA Controller. It has to be switched from SATA-1 to SATA-1+2 to see the second drive.