Can not access Dell bios

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londonandlawson

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
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I am replacing the hard drive. It is an older Inspirion XP machine. It says to hit F2 but no go. It then goes to a black screen that says Darwin/x86 boot v5.0.132 Chameleon v1.0.12 down below it has boot: then a flashing cursor
 
I did that then it says something about organizing hardware, hit f2 for setup but I can't. Then I get this screen
 
Did you have the jumper setting on the HDD set to master? if so, and it doesn't work, try setting it to CS or cable select.
 
Are you sure you don't have F-lock on your keyboard? Make sure to turn that on if you do. Try another keyboard too, try both USB and PS2
 
Good suggestion by MastaFlyMason. Your keyboard maybe screwed. I know one of my keyboard is messed also that the computer would hang when it tried to post. When I swapped the keyboard, it was running fine.
 
I took the drive out and put it as a slave on my pc and reformatted it. I hooked it back up and can't get that Dell to recognize it. I keep getting diskette errors or missing and depending on how I have the drives hooked up I will get double beeps.
 
What type of harddrive are we referring to? IDE or SATA? Don't use SLAVE settings, if it's IDE try cable select instead. Also, try swapping keyboards also.
 
Dimension 2400, ide cables. I have not tried the F Lock yet. But earlier when I would hit either f2 or f12 it would be and scroll down repeating the text
 
Try the F lock if your keyboard has it, it is necessary to use the top function keys. If you don't have f lock on they won't do anything. It is most common on older Microsoft keyboards, but it may be on other keyboards too.
 
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