I have an Optiplex GX 620 Mini Tower that displays a NIC failure error at boot. The error message reads "NIC failure. Press F1 to reboot or F2 to go in to setup." The PC did not boots

Good Day,
That is quite an easy thing to do.
Immediately you turn on your PC, after displaying the brand (for some PC), the computer dispalys 'press F__ to enter boot setup'. If you can't get to read it, either press F2, F12, F10 or F1 continously after you turn on your system. Then you can make your corrections.
I hope this helps. Thank you for using Fixya.

one step you can check boot device menu by clicking f2
first boot device should be HDD hard drive
if it is also correct then surely the hard drive is faulty and you need to contact dell at 1-800-624-9896

Your hard drive is failing. You will need to replace it.

my dell gx 280 fan failure how i solve it'

your cd rom may not reading the os cd installer, try to clean the cd and run it again with the same procedure as you did first.

Generally an indication that the Hard Drive isn't detected
Things to check, go to BIOS F2, reset defaults and reboot, see if the HDD is seen. If it is, the battery on the motherboard is likely dead and needs replacement (Watch battery at Walmart, 3 dollars)
If the HDD doesn't detect after resetting the BIOS, then most likely a Hard Drive failure

at the same time goto set up screen by pressing f2 and then change the boot sequence as cd drive to be first boot device and then try to boot from cd and as soon as you restrt and after dell logo it giuves you a message press any key to boot from cd at the same time press space bar be very quick as you have only 2 seconds to press the key or it wont boot if that does not work then the problem is with the cd drive.

Try to set it to boot first in cdrom in bios setting then place a bootable cd in cd drive that will run in DOS mode. If this boots up with a command prompt. Then your hard drive has a fault, could be a corrupt files or missing files.

Post comment if it does not help so we can device another solution.

Hi hunter555,

First off, you've done a lot of work for nothing. What you need to do is put back the new memory. When the Dell Bios boots, it confirming that it has detected the new memory. What you need to do is hit the F1 key to reboot and continue on to the XP installation. When you open the case, it will say the same thing. Don't worry about it, it's only confirming that the case was opened. Typically, I shut off the case intrusion detection, only because I'm always adding things to the machines and it's just a extra step I have to take to boot. However, it's good to know that your bios is confirming that you've opened the case, and that you've put in new memory. You want to make sure that the setup recongizes the entire memory in the banks. So, go to the system information page and make sure that it's reading the original and the additional memory 256k you added. Otherwise your done.

Good Luck

Mark

Can you post the error please?