Dell Dimension 5000 boot up problem

[pipemajor]

Hello all,
This is my first post and a long story, but please persevere with me.
I bought a Dell Dimension 5000 3yrs ago for my teenage grand-sons and although you can expect problems with them surfing, this one is a bad'un. The PC is in good physical condition and there aren't any obvious problems inside the case.
Here is the problem:
When I boot up in the normal manner it goes to the screen were it asks the user if they want to enter setup or press F1 to continue. It then takes a half hour to get to the desktop where there are three accounts. When I click on one, it takes another 20 mins or so to get to the users screen, but it only contains the Windows XP background. NO ICONS, NO START BUTTON, SYSTEM TRAY.
I can't close the PC in the usual way or go Ctrl+Alt+Delete to shut it down. I can't access the Control Panel or RUN.
I have tried to reinstall, factory settings with F12, but that was futile. F8 or delete at start up won't take me to SAFE MODE.
F11 doesn't do the factory default settings either.
I have tried the Extended Diagnostic feature but it turned up clear.
I finally decided to sacrifice the personal files and created an Fdisk to reformat the HDD. As the PC doesn't have an internal floppy drive I used a USB external one, but it wasn't recognized.
If anyone can help me I'd very much appreciate it.
Thanks for reading and all help will be gratefully received.

Tom

 

[pipemajor]

Having gone through every component on the machine I identified the Hard Drive as the offender.
I bought a new one and installed it. Inserted my own copy of Windows XP (not a blag copy), installed it and activated it by phone. all OK.
Windows XP is running, but I still need the drivers.
I went to the Dell Support/Driver Downloads site, identified the drivers that I need and saved them to an online folder called 'My Downloads'.
I now have another problem downloading them, because I am asking for them to be downloaded to another computer, the Dell isn't online. The site won't let me download to a flash drive so I can transfer them to the Dell.
I'm at a loss what to do next, can anyone help.
Thanks

 

[ToffeeNick]

Don't save them to "My Downloads" press "download Now".
Navigate to where the drivers have downloaded to and then transfer them to your flash drive

 

[pipemajor]

Thanks for the advice Nick, unfortunately that also failed. I'm off to a car-boot to see if I can pick a recovery disc up.
Thanks again, I appreciate your help.

 

[empip]

Did you follow the installation instructions?
1) Saving download somewhere... perhaps desktop
2) Run the 'self extracting zip file' this unzips the driver files and places them in a named folder... In the case of my video drivers
C:\DRIVERS\video\R158511
3) Goto the folder referenced and run installation from there.

<Ctrl> and <F11> together, for factory image re-installation.

?

 

[ToffeeNick]

unfortunately that also failed.

Really
I actually went to the Dell site and managed to download some drivers hence my post

 

[pipemajor]

Thanks Nick & Empip,
Well you two have confounded me, (not hard many would say). I've just tried to download the drivers to my own PC, not the target PC and here's what I got:

Having identified the driver I save it to a folder like you. It seems to have been saved ok. But when I try to add another driver file to the same folder I get the overwrite message.
If you can see where I am going wrong please tell me and I would very much appreciate the advice.
Thanks again, I'm grateful for your efforts.

 

[ToffeeNick]

ah I see what your doing, your downloading the "download Manager" not the actual driver. On the second photo you are trying to download the audio driver but in reality it is going to download the "DellDriverDownloadManager" which I presume is a little application which scans your PC and then choses which drivers you require. The actual audio driver file you want is R94481.EXE
I don't know how you managed to download the "DellDriverDownloadManager" and not the driver but hey If you still can't get the driver then just highlight the filename I told you, search google, and the resulting search will offer a link direct to the file off Dell ok.