Computer will not boot up, replaced hard drive as only 20g with a 40g was working fine when bought, put in win XP disc but nothing showing on screen. Tried another graphics card but to no avail. Intended to upgrade RAM also but until I can get it to boot there is no point.

if you have win 7 on a disc and you want to put it on the hard drive , try this
on start up hold down alt+ delete to get into bios
change the boot up from hard drive to cd as primary start up boot up
put the disc in a cd and close it down
restart and the pc should then boot from the disc in the cd drive
you should be able also to simply put the disc in the cd, go to computer , click on the cd drive and run and that should put the win 7 on the hard drive
talk with a computer shop for other ideas as to how to do it if that doesn't work

Test your PSU or replace it if your power supply units fan is not working your PSU is faulty

One bad lead can cause a computer to continue on a cycle or to shutdown or fail to detect/ boot up a computer hard drive

Test all leads that attach to your hard drive including electrical extensions,IDE,SATA

the leads from your "((MOTHERBOARD TO YOUR HARD DRIVE))" make sure they have a secure connection and are not faulty or just replace them they could be faulty
make sure all leads that are attached to your drives dvd\cd 3 1/2 inch floppy have secure connections and are not faulty even the electrical extensions or just replace them they could be faulty a computer needs its connections to continue its cycle and have an end so any faulty leads will end up with a computer error even something as small as a faulty electrical extension or fan lead can cause this problem

follow the troubleshooting procedure a computer needs all of the data and electrical current to travel through every device and to have an end to be able work properly

a motherboard and a hard drive any leads between them will fail before your motherboard or your hard drive if its a flat ribbon 40 pin type IDE replace it this will be the first to fail check all electrical extensions make sure they are securely seated even the cd/dvd floppy drives need to have current go through make sure these drives are working hope this helps also it could be a dirty computer clean all of the dust from your computer you could use a vacuum cleaner but whatever you use make absolutely sure there is no moisture gets to anything in your computer

hope this helps

Since you mentioned that you formatted the hard disc then you have to install the Operating System again with the restore disk you have or the Win XP or Win & which ever disc you have. The reason you are not seeing anything is because the operating system is not fully loaded or not loaded at all. What concerns me is that it is totally black with nothing showing up not even the BIOS if I understand you correctly. If you see a bunch of text DOS showing information at least at the boot up then we are fine if not then the BIOS may be missing or corrupted that is a whole different matter. If that is the case you will have to flash the BIOS with a separate disc and you will have to know the mother board configurations and the actual BIOS number you have for this PC or laptop. Then restore the BIOS most likely you are seeing the writing at the boot up so lets hope so.

Now press F2 at the boot up and go into the BIOS and set your computer to boot from the CD or DVD ROM drive as the first boot. Then the hard disk as the second boot. Then hit F10 click on save and close now boot up with the operating system disc in the ROM drive and let it do its thing. The software disc will have the driver for a standard ROM drive to be able to install when first booting up. It will go in and setup the files for the install and you are on your way. Just follow the onscreen instructions also I usually have my Internet connected up to my computer when I start the installation because it will do the updates needed online when installing software. That is how simple it is.

If this does not work I would suggest taking your computer to someone who knows more about installations than you do and let them fix it for you. It is a good learning experience but like I said it concerns me about black screen you did not specify of this occurs through out the whole process or just during the install process or if you saw any start up DOS wording. I do hope that this pointed you in a better light on the matter of software installation. If you are seeing something like this at your boot screen then we are good to go. Thanks for using FixYa! John

Check again for the compatibility

Here is a picture I found that shows the jumper settings for:
Quantum Fireball CR
Quantum Fireball CX
Quantum Fireball EL
Quantum Fireball EX
Quantum Fireball LCT08
Quantum Fireball LCT10
Quantum Fireball LCT15
Quantum Fireball Plus KA
Quantum Fireball Plus KX
Quantum Fireball SE
Quantum Fireball ST
Quantum Fireball LM
Quantum Fireball AS

http://www.tacktech.com/images/articles/379/mxo_ata_jumpers_2.png

i believed its not the mother board, check the system setting (press F2 when dell logo came out on screen) maybe the boot sequence is not configured right, try to set

First Boot: internal hard drive

and also remove any USB drive or floppy disk or CD inside optical drive or memory card connected to notebook before trying to boot the machine.

Vista doesn't generally like to be installed on a hard drive that big. Well, Windows, in general doesn't.

And, from the sounds of it, you didn't install Windows on your new primary 1.5TB drive, you just copied it from the 500GB drive, which won't work.

Here's what you should to, to solve this:
1) Swap out your 1.5TB drive with the 500GB drive again.
2) Swap out your secondard 1.5TB drive, with the new one.
3) Create a partition of 120GB or less on that drive
4) Install Windows on the new partition.
5) Put the other 1.5TB drive back in, as secondary.

Once that's done, you can swap out the new 1.5TB drive with your Windows partition on it, in place of the 500GB drive.

When you boot, Windows may ask you to select which operating system you want, just select Windows Vista, and you should be good to go.

I had a similar issue a few years ago, when I tried to install Windows on a 1TB drive, and couldn't get it to work. Once I partitioned a smaller space, it worked like magic.

put in the windows 2000 or xp disk
98 is not supported by microsoft , youll have many problems online
but you need to format the hard drive , 20 gb is good
with the windows xp cd boot from it
you will see just one letter drive if more delete them and format just one drive, you can use the quick format , so the windows xp files will go on after that, but youll have 30 day trial

This is an operating system error, and you will need an operating system disc. You can try to repair or reinstall the operating system, but most likely the hard drive has failed and will need replacing.

u have to boot xp on it with your cds set bios to cd 1st then put xp cd in it ask hit any key to boot in ten formattt new hard drive make partions ect then install xp ok