Phoenix Bios screen only

[FlaBill]

My friend's Dell Dimension 2400 running WinXP only boots to black and
white screen showing Bios into, Secondary drive 1 not found, Press F1
to continue, Press F2 to setup utility.
A blinking cursor remains but no response from keyboard which is a
wireless one with new batteries.
Suggestions for troubleshooting are welcome.
Thanks,
Bill

 

[Bob I]

Plug in regular keyboard and Press F1

 

[BillW50]

In
FlaBill typed on Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:32:51 -0700 (PDT):

My friend's Dell Dimension 2400 running WinXP only boots to black and
white screen showing Bios into, Secondary drive 1 not found, Press F1
to continue, Press F2 to setup utility.
A blinking cursor remains but no response from keyboard which is a
wireless one with new batteries.
Suggestions for troubleshooting are welcome.
Thanks,
Bill

You know I bought an Avatar computer back in 2000 which acted like that
after about 10 months. But the keyboard did work (PS/2 type). And I
could boot it up in Windows 98SE Safe Mode (still in B&W). Avatar
refused to honor their warrantee and won't even talk to me about it. And
I always suspected that the motherboard used those defective
electrolytic capacitors that fails in about a years time.

 

[Don Phillipson]

My friend's Dell Dimension 2400 running WinXP only boots to black and
white screen showing Bios into, Secondary drive 1 not found, Press F1
to continue, Press F2 to setup utility.
A blinking cursor remains but no response from keyboard which is a
wireless one with new batteries.
Suggestions for troubleshooting are welcome.

The Dell user may need a plug-in keyboard to solve
this problem fast. A wireless KB requires enabling drivers
and this boot process hangs before KB drivers can
be loaded.

 

[FlaBill]

The Dell user may need a plug-in keyboard to solve
this problem fast.  A wireless KB requires enabling drivers
and this boot process hangs before KB drivers can
be loaded.

Thanks to all for suggestions. I was planning on substituting the
conventional keyboard and will definitely try it and restore default
settings. Will let you know.
Bill
Fort Lauderdale