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Dimension 4300

AnonymousAnonymous
edited April 2012 in Hardware
Someone gave me a Dimension 4300. Yes it's old but it was free. Not too sure yet what I will do with it. The C.O.A on the side is Windows Me. It has a 20 GB Hard drive. The Hard drive is bad. It does not boot. The screen has some error about the drive and then F1 to continue. I put the drive in another computer as slave and it failed to boot with the drive as slave. I have not had too much time to mess with it. I put an 80 GB drive in tried to load XP with my Dell XP disk. It stalled on the screen where it loads the files. I believe the CD-Rom or CD R whatever it is may also be bad. I can unhook the 20 GB that was in it and still get a drive error but cannot remember if it was because the hard drive was unhooked or not. Maybe Monday I can find time to work on it.

Comments

  • dontabandonmedontabandonme
    you can get a retail XP CD pretty cheap. Also for your Hard Drive issue look for one @ newegg or tigerdirect (OR if you really want to, look on ebay).
  • nikkigreg1974nikkigreg1974
    i had to same problem my dell dimension 4550. if the hard drive is bad or not there you get that press F1 to continue warning. you can go into the bios and clear out all hard drives and select none or auto for your hard drives for now and just have the cd-roms hook up for now until you decide was hard drive you going to put in the place of the old one. xp won't load up from cd if you got a bad hard drive in it. i found that out too and that's the same of windows 2000. you should be able to boot off the floppy if you got one in it.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    dontabandonme wrote:
    you can get a retail XP CD pretty cheap. Also for your Hard Drive issue look for one @ newegg or tigerdirect (OR if you really want to, look on ebay).

    I have a Dell XP SP3 CD. I do not need to buy one. I also have one I got at School that can be reactivated. I also have plenty of spare harddrives. I even have a new 20 GB somewhere. But I will more than likely use the 80 GB or a 40 GB for that computer. I may not even use it. I can get the parts like wi-fi card and NIC out. It even has a 56k modem ha ha.


    nikkigreg1974 wrote:
    i had to same problem my dell dimension 4550. if the hard drive is bad or not there you get that press F1 to continue warning. you can go into the bios and clear out all hard drives and select none or auto for your hard drives for now and just have the cd-roms hook up for now until you decide was hard drive you going to put in the place of the old one. xp won't load up from cd if you got a bad hard drive in it. i found that out too and that's the same of windows 2000. you should be able to boot off the floppy if you got one in it.


    I believe the CD-Rom is bad. It would boot to the CD but was taking too long to get past the loading files part. I had the 80 GB in and was trying to get XP on it with the Dell XP CD. It will be already activated. I may even use it for a dos/Win98 computer and no Internet. I have some older games that don't work with 2000 XP and up. I kelp my 98 CD for a reason so I may as well use it.
    A friend of mine has a Dimension 2400 2.4 Ghz 1 GB Ram and 15" LCD He told me I could get it for $25.00. I like computers so much I may get it. I know it's a little old but I don't care it will be just another spare and the monitor I may use as a dual monitor on one of my systems.
  • gdea73gdea73
    you can get an IDE CD-ROM drive for nearly nothing.

    You can also get another 20GB IDE hard drive for about $10. Just shop around, eBay and local shops, or other old PCs are your best options.

    Depending on the specs you may want Win2K or Win98, but if it's got like 512MB of DDR RAM then XP should run acceptably well.
  • stitchstitch
    Just steal a CD-ROM from another machine to do setup. USB keys and the Internet can probably remove reliance on it there out.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    I have decided to scrap it for parts. Good idea. I took the power supply out and put it in my old Gateway P4 1.8. Plugged it in turned it on and it seems to work right now. The problem with the old gateway was it would sometimes shut down. The power light would sometimes be orange like it was in sleep but the only way to wake it was to power down and turn back on. I will keep it on for a few hours and see how it does. I know it sounds dumb but if it is does not cause any problems I may sell it on ebay maybe a low starting bid and see what happens.
  • gdea73gdea73
    that's not particularly dumb, you can sell old components on eBay, provided they actually work. I wouldn't sell a PSU you're not confident in / haven't voltage-tested, however.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    It seems to be doing good with the replaced PSU. I guess that was the problem. The old (PSU) one was loud for awhile then it would be quiter. Something was up with the fan in it.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    When the PSU fan gets loud like that, the only way to fix it is to open the PSU and lick the filter capacitor.

    I know, it seems counter intuitive, but trust me, it works like a charm.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    BlueSun wrote:
    When the PSU fan gets loud like that, the only way to fix it is to open the PSU and lick the filter capacitor.

    I know, it seems counter intuitive, but trust me, it works like a charm.


    Yea really OK maybe if I wanted to commit suicide but I don't but if I did that would be the secound. First would be to open an old TV and touch the yoke part sometimes that kills.
  • BODBOD
    BlueSun wrote:
    When the PSU fan gets loud like that, the only way to fix it is to open the PSU and lick the filter capacitor.

    I know, it seems counter intuitive, but trust me, it works like a charm.

    Quite often the power cables get dirty too, it's best to strip the wires back and lick the live wire. Saliva is pretty effective at cleaning.

    Remember to make sure the power is on though, it ensures everything is earthed properly so you don't get harmed.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    BOD wrote:
    Quite often the power cables get dirty too, it's best to strip the wires back and lick the live wire. Saliva is pretty effective at cleaning.

    Remember to make sure the power is on though, it ensures everything is earthed properly so you don't get harmed.
    Win7User wrote:
    Yea really OK maybe if I wanted to commit suicide.
  • gdea73gdea73
    Win7User: You mean the flyback transformer, like on a CRT. Those can hold like 20,000 volts... yum XD
  • BODBOD
    Voltage doesn't mean shit.
  • AnonymousAnonymous
    gdea73 wrote:
    Win7User: You mean the flyback transformer, like on a CRT. Those can hold like 20,000 volts... yum XD

    I mean the autual tube of an old CRT TV. It looks like this. It is also called the yoke.

    05_TV_tube.jpg
  • gdea73gdea73
    Oh. Right. Yeah that could probably electrocute you...
    I was referring to a region within a CRT monitor, it's the reason you have to be careful opening, for example, an iMac G3.
  • bittinbittin
    My brother got my old Dimension 4600, thinking of getting more ram memory for that and give him later now it only got 256mb ram :(
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