Ok, I know this is outside of the norm for this page, I don't really care.
Backstory: I buy things from estate auctions on hi-bid. Nobody else bid on this so I got it for the minimum bid, $2.50 USD.
It was missing the hdd, and it was in a filthy barn.
Side note: auctions are generally "as-is, where is" that means you pick these items up at the location of the estate, they usually pull things out and organize them, but they don't clean them or anything usually.
I have an extra IDE HDD, so I threw that in and tried to install Windows XP. I got errors halfway through saying "setup cannot copy the file:"
Then I got it to go all the way through, but it won't boot.
Then I got a system error that the HDD is not present.
I tried an IDE adapted SSD, still not recognized.
Then I got the HDD recognized again.
I figured I would check the ram: 1x 256MB. I threw in 2x512MB, that's a neat trick.
I also swapped out the cd drive since it was having a hard time opening up anyway.
Now I'm back to, "setup cannot copy the file:"
Maybe a bad CD burn? Idk, it's been awhile since I've done this.
That machine was built during the capacitor plague. It could have all sorts of weirdness going on. Have you ran any hardware diagnostics yet? Did you notice any distended caps when installing the hdd?
I looked over the caps and didn't see anything. I did figure out that the HDD problem was simply a BIOS setting. The settings are not intuitive.
This was my thought too. Whenever you open one of these Dells you always see swollen, leaky capacitors. They can cause some very odd behavior, such as only booting exactly one in three times.
Theoretically, it should be relatively straightforward to find and replace them if you were really dedicated
The problem I've always had with mobo caps is the high heat solder they used. You either need to use an extremely high wattage heat source or you need to get a lower temp solder to bond to the existing solder so that you can melt it with a regular iron.