Dell Repair Driving Me Nuts...

[Major_A]

Someone asked me to look at their Dell cause it was running slow. Well as it turns out it is full of spyware and viruses, surprise surprise. Well I managed to get Avast! loaded up and ran a full scan. It picked up a virus in Windows and I deleted it. Well big mistake Windows would boot but crash immediately at the desktop with a explorer.exe error. Long story short I pulled the drive, formated it in one of my other computers and am ready to reinstall Windows. When I tell the BIOS to boot from the CD ROM it's a no go. When I enter Dell's little boot configuration utility and tell it to boot from the CD ROM it's a no go. How the f*@k do you install Windows on a Dell? I can't get it to read any disc's from the boot, not my Windows CD, Dell's Windows CD, Ultimate Boot CD, Maxtor Maxblast, etc...

[thegoatman]

At first I'd be afraid it would be because there's a reinstall image on the harddrive in a hidden partition you wiped. I don't think that's the case since Dell has reinstall CDs. Maybe the drive is bad or the board's SM Bus or IDE controller is bad. I'd give dell a call and ask for tier 2 support the moment you get a live person.

[Major_A]

Turns out that the brand new IDE cable was bad. I was about two seconds away from dousing it in gasoline and taking a match to it.