[dmini9]

Hi everyone,
I've been visiting this awesome forum for a while and today (finally) I feel I've got something worth sharing...

For the ones that doesn't have an external floppy disk drive and can't reproduce the method described here with any pendrive (my case), I suggest to use the method described in my 4th comment (victor) in that very same page:

(copy&paste; it's 00:54, feeling sleepy)

----------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know why but the embedded BIOS flash utility didn't recognize any of my pendrives (I tried with 5 different) in any of the ports.

In some of the tests I heard that beep sequence just when I was supposed to hear the beeps you describe in your procedure.
Anyway, I think it has nothing to do with your flashing procedure. Maybe it was the motherboard complaining about the mess.

I finally downloaded the recovery app from mydellmini.com

the app generates a bootable recovery floppy disk. I don't know why but it does not work with pendrives (even if you set the drive letter to a:. Fails when writing the boot record)

So I created a virtual floppy disk drive with a freeware software and used the recovery app to create the boot recovery floppy on the virtual floppy drive.

After that I saved the virtual floppy content to a .ima file and used it as a source to burn a bootable CD from Nero (Nero Burning Rom has an option to create boot cds from floppy drives or floppy images)

And then I recreated your procedure with an external USB DVDROM drive (I don't have a USB floppy reader).

----------------------------------------------------------------

I hope someone can take advantage of this third method and save a few euros in external floppy drives (or sending the mini back to dell)

[WildcatWhiz]

Hi,

I've tried the USB pen-drive method,as well as the USB CD-ROM method and I am having no luck. I used the utility to copy the files to an internal floppy disk, then used Nero to burn that image onto a CD. It seems like nothing is working for me. The last step is to try an external floppy drive...Anyone have any thoughts?

[Piksy]

Originally Posted by dmini9

Hi everyone,
I've been visiting this awesome forum for a while and today (finally) I feel I've got something worth sharing...

For the ones that doesn't have an external floppy disk drive and can't reproduce the method described here with any pendrive (my case), I suggest to use the method described in my 4th comment (victor) in that very same page:

(copy&paste; it's 00:54, feeling sleepy)

----------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know why but the embedded BIOS flash utility didn't recognize any of my pendrives (I tried with 5 different) in any of the ports.

In some of the tests I heard that beep sequence just when I was supposed to hear the beeps you describe in your procedure.
Anyway, I think it has nothing to do with your flashing procedure. Maybe it was the motherboard complaining about the mess.

I finally downloaded the recovery app from mydellmini.com

the app generates a bootable recovery floppy disk. I don't know why but it does not work with pendrives (even if you set the drive letter to a:. Fails when writing the boot record)

So I created a virtual floppy disk drive with a freeware software and used the recovery app to create the boot recovery floppy on the virtual floppy drive.

After that I saved the virtual floppy content to a .ima file and used it as a source to burn a bootable CD from Nero (Nero Burning Rom has an option to create boot cds from floppy drives or floppy images)

And then I recreated your procedure with an external USB DVDROM drive (I don't have a USB floppy reader).

----------------------------------------------------------------

I hope someone can take advantage of this third method and save a few euros in external floppy drives (or sending the mini back to dell)

Hi
Would you be so kind to post here the .img file which you have burned to cd?

Thanks