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Operating Systems
All things operating system related, from Windows to Mac to Linux distros and the more obscure.
Subcommunity of Technology.
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I swapped the system battery with a good one. Maybe it's losing something on restart when the install actually completes.
Does it have a requirement for the first memory slot to be populated by something smaller than 256? Can you try a low end Linux OS just to get it up and running?
There is a bios setting for "os install" which limits the amount of available ram, I believe that is for older os's. This one shipped at the very end of windows xp in around 2005.
If the HDD is intermittently not being detected even in the BIOS, there's probably an issue with the hardware involved. Flaky IDE port on the mobo? Bad power or data cable? Overheating? Or, as someone has already suggested, capacitor plague?
I can't remember whether Dells of that era had manufacturer hardware lockin issues or not.
I swapped cables and etc. It turned out to be a bios setting for the drive. I think the bad battery just caused the settings to get wiped.
Why it was intermittent like that makes no sense though, but it's good after I figured out how to enable that drive number.
Apparently the Dimension 3000 can boot from usb, so it might be worth a shot to burn xp to a spare drive.
Cool, I'll try that instead. I didn't think it could do that.
Edit: that might require a bios update as I don't see it as an option under "boot sequence"
Old machines are a pain.
I like tinkering, it's meditative to me.