Dell 8400 battery change

[captain s]

Hi New to this but here goes: I have recently change the battery on my dell 8400 (on advice from a former friend) And now the error message " we are sorry for any inconvenience, but windows did not etc etc. I have tried to boot from all the options and been into Bios and re set manufacturers settings, I have unplugged everything except keyboard maouse and monitor. It boots up past the dell logo and then the error and no matter what I select it keeps comingh back to this screen!!
Help please.

 

[will14]

Hi New to this but here goes: I have recently change the battery on my dell 8400 (on advice from a former friend) And now the error message " we are sorry for any inconvenience, but windows did not etc etc. I have tried to boot from all the options and been into Bios and re set manufacturers settings, I have unplugged everything except keyboard maouse and monitor. It boots up past the dell logo and then the error and no matter what I select it keeps comingh back to this screen!!
Help please.

The answer is directly proportional to the question but I know you're new. As much as the error messages seem totally meaningless if you can actually provide that error it helps a lot. Simply swapping the battery shouldn't crash the OS(supposing it's the right one and you aren't frying the laptop).

Is it giving you the options to do checkdisk or last known configuration etc? Is it saying "sorry can't start recovery"? Is it giving a blue screen with a stop code. Post the exact error and someone can help you out more.

If no one responds after you've posted shoot me a PM and I'll look into it some.

I'm also curious what issues you may had been having before you replaced the battery if any that prompted him to suggest you getting a new battery as that may be related.

 

[captain s]

The answer is directly proportional to the question but I know you're new. As much as the error messages seem totally meaningless if you can actually provide that error it helps a lot. Simply swapping the battery shouldn't crash the OS(supposing it's the right one and you aren't frying the laptop).

Is it giving you the options to do checkdisk or last known configuration etc? Is it saying "sorry can't start recovery"? Is it giving a blue screen with a stop code. Post the exact error and someone can help you out more.

If no one responds after you've posted shoot me a PM and I'll look into it some.

I'm also curious what issues you may had been having before you replaced the battery if any that prompted him to suggest you getting a new battery as that may be related.

The error message reads as follows:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this.

If your computer stopped responding, restarted unexpectantly or was automatickly shut down to protect your files and folders, choose klast known good configuration to revert to the most recent settings that worked.
If a previous start up attempt was interrupted due to a power failure or because the reset button was pressed, or if you arent sure what caused the problem, choose start windows normally.

Safe mode
safemode with networking
safe mode with command prompt

Last known good configuration

Start windows normally

I HAVE TRIED EVERY OPTION WITHOUT SUCCESS. PREVIOUS TO CHANGING THE BATTERY THE MACHINE SHOWED THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE AT START UP (EXACT WORDING NOT KNOWN AS NOT MY MACHINE, WIFES) PROBLEM WITH BIOS FOLLOWED BY A STING OF NUMBERS.
ON THE BACK OF THE MACHINE WE HAVE 4 LIGHTS A,B,C AND D. ALL FOUR ARE LIT.?????
IS IT NEW MACHINE TIME AND IF SO CAN I INSTALL THE DELL HARD DRIVE INTO ANOTHER MACHINE WHICH ISNT DELL?

 

[will14]

Gotcha so it didn't give you the error code i.e. blue screen and stop code. It is probably set to auto-restart on error so it doesn't sit there at a blue screen letting you write it down, they usually go something like

Bad_Pool_Header 0x0000000000 0x2892828280
Boot Drive not found 0x0000000000 0x2892828280

I gotta rush so I can only answer a few of the questions real quick then maybe come back later but...

HDD shouldn't be an issue putting into another machine, although as it's a laptop HDD chances are you'd get a machine with a HDD already and you'll want an external enclosure($10-40) to put that HDD to "slave" and copy off any information.

Your computer may have a software problem, so while offhand I can't tell you what's wrong with your windows you may be able to reload the OS. I'm guessing you need information off of the computer though, in which case you could try using an enclosure for this drive to get your information off of it.

Once you have your information you can try using the recovery partition to restore your OS to factory settings. Usually there is a hotkey to do this shift+f1 dlt etc I don't know what it is for your model off hand but chances are it has a recovery partition you can use to restore the OS after you retrieve information.

If you want to try to repair the OS you can use windows recovery console, I won't try to give you a walkthrough here as there are better written ones online.

Hopefully this helps some, I'd be more through and send you to some links but gotta finish my weekly report

It probably isn't new machine time if you can reload the OS I'd try that first, but if this machine is 3-5 years old(didn't google your model sorry). Chances are you're better off getting a brand new cheap laptop and saving yourself the time and effort, and only try to get an enclosure for the information.

If you find troubleshooting fun though or want to learn I would definitely suggest the windows recovery/reloading the OS. I can't say for sure whether you have a software issue(corrupt OS), or a hardware problem though.

 

[captain s]

Gotcha so it didn't give you the error code i.e. blue screen and stop code. It is probably set to auto-restart on error so it doesn't sit there at a blue screen letting you write it down, they usually go something like

Bad_Pool_Header 0x0000000000 0x2892828280
Boot Drive not found 0x0000000000 0x2892828280

I gotta rush so I can only answer a few of the questions real quick then maybe come back later but...

HDD shouldn't be an issue putting into another machine, although as it's a laptop HDD chances are you'd get a machine with a HDD already and you'll want an external enclosure($10-40) to put that HDD to "slave" and copy off any information.

Your computer may have a software problem, so while offhand I can't tell you what's wrong with your windows you may be able to reload the OS. I'm guessing you need information off of the computer though, in which case you could try using an enclosure for this drive to get your information off of it.

Once you have your information you can try using the recovery partition to restore your OS to factory settings. Usually there is a hotkey to do this shift+f1 dlt etc I don't know what it is for your model off hand but chances are it has a recovery partition you can use to restore the OS after you retrieve information.

If you want to try to repair the OS you can use windows recovery console, I won't try to give you a walkthrough here as there are better written ones online.

Hopefully this helps some, I'd be more through and send you to some links but gotta finish my weekly report

It probably isn't new machine time if you can reload the OS I'd try that first, but if this machine is 3-5 years old(didn't google your model sorry). Chances are you're better off getting a brand new cheap laptop and saving yourself the time and effort, and only try to get an enclosure for the information.

If you find troubleshooting fun though or want to learn I would definitely suggest the windows recovery/reloading the OS. I can't say for sure whether you have a software issue(corrupt OS), or a hardware problem though.

Hi and thanks enormously for your time and help with this. I actualy found troubleshooting very very annoying and stressful until I found and started reading these forums, now wierdly I rather enjoy it and am more determined to get to the bottom of this, so, scarily when this problem is fixed I may get my other machines out which are languishing in the cupboard with wierd error messages I couldnt be bothered to try and sort out, maybe I have found a new hobby!!!
Again thanks for your help and I am going to try rebooting with windows disc (when I get it back) and will let you know if it works.. One last question, I am going to change the battery just in case but I have bought a normal duracell battery, it has the same number 2023 but the prefix letters are different, does this matter?

 

[captain s]

Hi All and thanks...all sorted. The problem seems to have been the Bios all along. When I changed the battery I didnt save the bios settings and when I rebooted they were incorrect and even set to factory settings it wouldnt recognise the hard drive. Found settings from another dell user with same machine and now all working ok.. moral to this story...do not mess with things you know nothing about and keep all settings saved!! Once again thanks for all the help..

 

[captain s]

Best answer selected by captain s.

 

[CurlyQ]

Hi All and thanks...all sorted. The problem seems to have been the Bios all along. When I changed the battery I didnt save the bios settings and when I rebooted they were incorrect and even set to factory settings it wouldnt recognise the hard drive. Found settings from another dell user with same machine and now all working ok.. moral to this story...do not mess with things you know nothing about and keep all settings saved!! Once again thanks for all the help..

Hi, I'm having the same problem you had. I have a Dell Inspiron E1505, also known as the Dell 6400. My battery died so I bought a new one. I probably should of turned the laptop off before changing the battery but I didn't- I changed it out when the computer was on and running. Nothing bad happened at first and the battery charged - I thought all was good.

But then Windows installed some updates and rebooted and now I can't get past the Dell start screen just as you couldn't. You said you solved it but I don't understand what you did. How do you change the bios settings? Thanks for your help.

 

[no8rf]

I replaced the battery of the Dell 8400 because it said voltage was low, after I replaced it I get the hit f-1 to continue or f-2 for setup, I have no Idea what the setting were prior to replacing battery and this should have not done anything to the memory as battery was out less then 10 sec, short or removing battery for 10 min is there anyway to reset the bios / cmos memory ?

 

[mre59]

Hi All and thanks...all sorted. The problem seems to have been the Bios all along. When I changed the battery I didnt save the bios settings and when I rebooted they were incorrect and even set to factory settings it wouldnt recognise the hard drive. Found settings from another dell user with same machine and now all working ok.. moral to this story...do not mess with things you know nothing about and keep all settings saved!! Once again thanks for all the help..

Hi,

My system is a Dell Dimension 8400, Bios version A01. I added a second 500G bit hard drive later on which is configured as a (drive 1) SATA. I had to change the memory once in the past (from 2 to 4GB), so I don't know if the original factory settings will be valid.

I have exactly the same problem as you, that is I get the blue screen after the battery change, except that, unlike you, I don't know anyone who has the same model as mine, so that I could copy the BIOS parameters which I thought i had done. As it turns out I had only noted the first level parameters in the Setup menu, so I don't have enough information to re-configure BIOS after the battery change. It looks as the system is trying to access drive 0 (the original hard disk) and going thru its partitions, just before crashing into blue screen. So, I played with a few parameters like hard disk configurations as SATA / HACI etc, but no luck. I also ran Dell diagnosis utility which suggests the computer and all its peripherals are functioning correctly.

Is there any way I can find out what parameters the BIOS needs in order to be configured correctly and let Windows to start up?

Thanks for your help.