[generalaxes]

good news kinda.
i was trying to boot this thing from a cd and i managed to boot the utility partition
right now i am using the "symptom tree" to perform tests. hopefully that will help me.
the keyboard test passed so i guess thats good
so far the IDE disk S/N 5JXK529S and IDE S/N D22M7LXE Confidence tests passed, but not with the green check mark
so i am going to work from there.
the computer was bad but it would always boot until one day there was a power serge,
so could i be looking at a very compounded hardware problem?

[Mak213]

Without proper protection from a power surge the mother board and just about every device in your PC can get damaged from the surge.

The first thing to check would be the Network adapter cause that isnt protected. Then start with GFX card and so on. A power surge sends a big power spike which can basically kill a machine.

So yeah you could have a compound hardware problem with 1 or more devices that have failed and causing you issues.

[generalaxes]

awesome thanks.
i found a thread in the hardware troubleshooting area, and the thread went on to talk about getting a second, new hard drive and using that to get the computer started.
then attaching the current "bad" drive as a slave.
and with that set up saving all of my information and then using something like seatools to fix the bad drive?
so far all of the other components are passing the dell self test.
and since i cannot boot correctly on this drive i figure that would just be an easier method.
would that work?

[Mak213]

That could work. I have not personally done this myself. But from what i have read on this topic it is a possibility that it could work in your benefit.

[generalaxes]

well any hope is better than no hope right?
ok i will gladly be the guinea pig!
ill start trying it out and let you know how it goes.

in the mean while i decided to run all the hard drive tests that the symptom tree allows and again the IDE confidence tests are not passing...