Dell Inspiron 3700 BIOS problem

Hi,

I have a Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop that I suddenly can't get to boot. In fact it will not even recognize that there is a hard drive installed. The hard drive (4.8 GB Fujitsu) is good - I can attached it via USB to another computer and it reads fine. Mounted in the laptop the BIOS doesn't even see that a hard drive is there.

This all happened when I was working on another laptop (a Sony) and tried the hard disk out of that laptop on my 3700. That HD (30 GB Fujitsu) tried to boot but then came up with a Dell branded password request in order to access the drive and continue booting. Of course I hadn't a clue what the password was (I'd never used one on the 3700 during boot) so the boot failed.

I then replaced the drive out of the Sony with the drive that came with the 3700. From that moment on, the BIOS couldn't see that hard drive. Accessing the BIOS showed no hard drive detected. I can't boot off of a CD because the system keeps looking for drive 0 which according to the BIOS is not there.

I downloaded a BIOS flash utility from Dell thinking if I could flash the BIOS possibly it would then be reset and it would then detect the hard drive.

Come to find out that I can't flash the BIOS without having a battery in the laptop. My battery died several months ago and I never bothered replacing it as I hardly ever used the battery.

So now what I am ready to try is perhaps removing the system battery and flushing the BIOS that way.

I have no idea how to get to the battery and I can't find anything on the Dell site that tells me. I am adept at changing memory, hard drives and the slide in and out CD and floppy modules, but I've never cracked a laptop case before although I work on desktops all the time. I do mainly software "fixes" on laptops.

If anyone can tell me how to do this, I'd appreciate it.

Yurt

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I would look the pins over real closely to make sure you didn't bend one
over. If the BIOS was able to recognize the drive previously, there is
no reason to think that is the problem.

Ardell Faul
Computer Monitor Service Inc.
Ardell's Laptop and PC Repair
10816 E. Mission Ave.,
Spokane Valley, Wa. 99206
ardell%40icehouse.net">ardellicehouse.net
509-891-5188

Yurt Ng wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop that I suddenly can't get to boot.
> In fact it will not even recognize that there is a hard drive
> installed. The hard drive (4.8 GB Fujitsu) is good - I can attached it
> via USB to another computer and it reads fine. Mounted in the laptop
> the BIOS doesn't even see that a hard drive is there.
>
> This all happened when I was working on another laptop (a Sony) and
> tried the hard disk out of that laptop on my 3700. That HD (30 GB
> Fujitsu) tried to boot but then came up with a Dell branded password
> request in order to access the drive and continue booting. Of course I
> hadn't a clue what the password was (I'd never used one on the 3700
> during boot) so the boot failed.
>
> I then replaced the drive out of the Sony with the drive that came
> with the 3700. From that moment on, the BIOS couldn't see that hard
> drive. Accessing the BIOS showed no hard drive detected. I can't boot
> off of a CD because the system keeps looking for drive 0 which
> according to the BIOS is not there.
>
> I downloaded a BIOS flash utility from Dell thinking if I could flash
> the BIOS possibly it would then be reset and it would then detect the
> hard drive.
>
> Come to find out that I can't flash the BIOS without having a battery
> in the laptop. My battery died several months ago and I never bothered
> replacing it as I hardly ever used the battery.
>
>; So now what I am ready to try is perhaps removing the system battery
> and flushing the BIOS that way.
>;
> I have no idea how to get to the battery and I can't find anything on
> the Dell site that tells me. I am adept at changing memory, hard
> drives and the slide in and out CD and floppy modules, but I've never
> cracked a laptop case before although I work on desktops all the time.
> I do mainly software "fixes" on laptops.
>
>; If anyone can tell me how to do this, I'd appreciate it.
>
> Yurt
>;
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>;
>
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>

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