H14rry

i think i have managed to figure out the problem. i have just disconnected the sata cable from my cd/dvd drive and everythin appears to be working fine? I'm going to see if I can reinstall the drivers for the cd/dvd drive and then double check that the hard drive is set as the primary boot device, sure it is though.

the ram is definately ok, there was a gig in there, 2 x 512 sticks and i have replaced them with 2 x 1gb sticks but like for like in terms of everything else in terms of ram. i have removed the old hard drive all together and again, replaced it for an exact, like for like, just more memory size. i have updated the bios drivers but not changed it all together. i tried having a bit more of a play again tonight to get it working but now it wont even boot up at all. I just get the blinking cursor in the top left hand corner after the bios screen. you say that the blinking cursor is an indication that its looking for the operating system, the operating system is loaded onto the new hard drive, as I say, i have removed the old one, and i have selected the hard drive as the primary boot device in the cmos settings. cant think what else to do and its really frustrating as it all seemed to work ok at first and now nothing???

Not detecting CD drive sometimes Hi, I recently rebuilt my pc, new hard drive, ram and operating system. other than that, all components remained the same, original machine is a DELL OPTIPLEX 740. I installed XP and installed all drivers from the DELL website. Now whenever I manage to sucessfully log on to the PC (which isnt always! See my other posts) my CD drive doesnt always appear in my computer and when I put a disk in I get nothing?? Any suggestions? I have definately installed the correct drivers. thanks

Hi, I am fairly experienced with PC's and have just rebuilt my first PC. All went well, new hard drive, more RAM etc. I installed XP Pro SP2 and then updated to SP3. I have installed all the drivers from the DELL website (machine is an OPTIPLEX 740). All appeared ok. Now I am starting to experience problems. Every time I start the machine up, I get the usual DELL logo and the bios loads ok. After about 20 seconds i then just get a black screen with a blinking dash in the top left corner and that it, I get no further. I have to manually turn the PC off and reboot, at which point, 9 times out of 10 windows loads sucessfully. Any ideas on why it does this?? Once in windows all is fine, but after about 20 minutes of usage, not with any particular program, its happened with iTunes, word, a few others, the computer just completely freezes. The mouse still moves about the screen but I cant close anything, open anything, run task manager, nothing?? I have to completely reboot and normally then get stuck with this blinking dash a few times before windows loads, I carry on with what I was doing, iTunes for example and then a little while later, 10 - 20 minutes, same again!?!?! Can someone with a little more knowledge than me please shed some light? I wondered whether it might be a problem with the PC trying to communicate with the hard drive intermitently??