im having a problem with my old dell dimention 4100 computer..i have had the comp for about 4 yrs and had no major problems but i got a new computer the other day so gave the 4100 to my mum for work use.. i reformatted the hard drive and done a fresh install of winxp pro witch i have done on the mechine loads of times in the past and all went well.. but now the comp wont boot... i conected the hard drive to my new computer to do the install and i know that thair isnt any problems there and the hard drive is fine and the ide cables on the 4100 are fine. i done a clear cmos coz i thaught that might have helped but it didnt.. so i updated the bios from a v06 (version with was currant on the 4100 system) to a v11(witch is newer from dell) and that all went fine but still my 4100 system wont boot to windows atall.. i have tryed moving the jumper on the hard drive from master to cable select but still it wont boot.. i have never had this problem b4 and am looking for a bit of advice please.. if i have missed something or you dont understand me then just post saying and ill try and make things more understandable. much thanks stephen161 uk

What do you mean by your computer won't boot. what happen when you turn on your computer, is there any specific message?

You have to have the drive in the machine it's meant for. If you install on your machine and then install the drive in mom's machine it won't work. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

i have managed to use a hard drive with an os on it from 1 comp to another.. just when u put a hd from 1 comp into another comp it dose work it just goes thrue the process of configuring the hd to the componants of the second computer.. plus the dell 4100 wouldnt let me install from the cd-rom to the hd thats y i ended up putting the hd into my new comp and doing the windos setup with the hd in the new comp.. and a reply to THELEGEND when i turn the dell4100 on the dell logo comes up as normal then the bios screen comes up.. the screen that i mean is the one that ses about your ram count and auto detecting hd and master and secondary im sur your aware of the screen it also has options like hit del to enter setup and f2 i think for safe mode and all that stuff.. then from that screen if no option is selected by user it goes to the xp load screen with the little scroll line at the bottom that loads in.. well i dont get the xp start up screen atall just goes to a black blank screen after the ram count..

You may get lucky and make it work. You MUST do the del thing to get into the BIOS. There you can tell the BIOS to AUTO select the HDD, select the boot sequence, etc. You are expecting a newly updated BIOS to recognize a strange HDD and boot as if there had not been any changes. Good luck,

no.. i had the problem b4 i done the bios update..that was my reason for doing the update coz i thaught the bios had corrupt.. plus the bios is detecting the hd on auto aswell .. the serial numbers match so its reconising it fine .. ok this might shed a bit of liht on things.. b4 i decided to reformat the hard drive and reinstall winxp pro i was taking my old stuff off the computer.. i was transfering the files onto a mass storage usb devise. it was all going well then near the end of 1 of the transfers the computer just restarted for no reason. so when it restarted i tryed transfering the files to the mass usb storage device again and again it just restarted on its own.. so when it booted bk up i took a look in the device manager and the usb hub had the lil ! mark on it.. so i uninstalled it and restarted windows and it dected it and reinstalled it all good.. so its been after experiencing that that i have been having this problem with the windows not booting after fresh install.. im wondering if my mboard is f@#ked..

Could be power supply or a poor connection. Time for a disasembly and careful reassembly. Another chance to ger lucky.