Dell Dimension 4600 - F1 to retry boot, F2 to enter system utility

Right now I am using Dell Dimension 4600 which is almost 3 year old. It is running Windows XP. So far I didn’t change any settings and didn’t install any new hardware recently. Also there is no modification done to the system. Yesterday, when the system was in sleep mode, I tried to wake it up after few hours of time interval. At this time, the system rebooted and shown me a black screen that says "Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 to enter system utility". At first I pushed F1 but it comes up with a same message but there were two beeps before that. If I press the F2, it showed me a system info. I tried different way to solve the problem but nothing worked so far. Why this message is showing up on my screen? What is causing this?

The messages indicate that your HDD has failed but this error possibly shown when you have a bootable USB device attached to the system. The same thing happened to me when I have connected my smartphone to computer and rebooted it. If the HDD is really failed or the system not able to boot up, then you should try to recover the data stored in the HDD before it completely goes off. To do this, you should try the different OS like Linux live CD or bootable USB stick. By using this you can recover the data to a different HDD or a portable HDD. If your bootable drive or OS contain any HDD tuning tool, run it to see if it can fix the problem. Also there is ZERO software which could fixes physically bad drives work fine again. Otherwise I would say that Boot sector get damaged or not found and due to this system does not able to find OS.

I have read about this issue in various forums and most of them said that the issue is due to the cmos battery but I don’t think that CMOS can cause this. Actually cmos battery saves the time and bios settings. I think that the problem is happened with either the Windows registry or the Hard Disk boot sector which got damaged or corrupted. if the BIOS does able to recognize the HDD, then your drive is still live and in a good condition. Best way to check the HDD is boot from any live CD or bootable drive. If you see your files on HDD or partition, then assume that your HDD is still working. You just need to repair your Windows and MBR.

I hope that Dell have provided you’re the Restore disk along with your system. Otherwise you might have created one later. If so, you can use that disk to restore back your Windows to normal condition. You don’t need to buy a Windows repair disk and so. But before using the restore disk, it would suggest you to check the system components and connection once again. Make sure that none of the components get damaged or unplugged from its connectors. Make sure that there is no loose connection and breaks in cable. Look for burning mark also like on capacitors. You have said that you there is 2 beep. In that case I would definitely check the RAM first on different slot or replacing with a different one. 2 beeps preliminarily suggest that there is a problem with system RAM.

I have found a solution somewhere and it fixed a problem without much effort. When you see the screen with F1 OR F2, make sure that

• CAPS LOCK light is turned on
• NUMBERS LOCK light is turned on
• SCROLL LOCK light is turned on

You can see those lights on the keyboard itself because every keyboard includes any indicator for these keys. The light glows when they are enabled or turned on. After this you must press

• (ALT TAB) E
• (ALT TAB) F
• (ALT TAB) B

At this time, the system will restart and BIOS will get reset. System will boot find now.

Thanks for the solution because it finally fixed my problem. I have tried several methods so far but none of them actually worked. At \last, I have decided to replace the CMOS battery with a new one. While looking into the manual, I came to know that it is a Duracell DL2032 3.0-Volt Lithium Battery. Luckily, this batter was available nearby store. But still before purchasing, I went for last time to find a solution and got this forum up. I didn’t try to reset the BIOS setting by clearing the CMOS because there was few important setting configured for the system. But finally I didn’t have any solution other than resetting it.