Dell Dimension 3000 Undocumented Diagnostic Lights Pattern?

Hi Allochthonous,

My suggestion would be to run the complete, extended Dell diagnostics, which also tests the motherboard. To do this, hit F12 on boot, then choose the option to boot from the utility partition. Select Extended test from the diagnostics options.

That is a great idea, except i cannot even get that far.  I guess i should have been more clear when i said "won't boot".  I mean that it won't even POST. The fans will spin, the hard drive spins, the power light comes on, that is it.

If i can ever get that far again, I will do it.

PK

It's probably time to bring it in to a shop.

That is a great idea, except i cannot even get that far.  I guess i should have been more clear when i said "won't boot".  I mean that it won't even POST. The fans will spin, the hard drive spins, the power light comes on, that is it.

I had a problem like that with my 2350; I cleared the CMOS and it worked. However, the problem could be more serious, like bad capacitors. In that case, it's time to change the mainboard.

Used mainboards can be had on eBay for $50 or so including shipping. It's not that hard to swap one in if you're careful. Or, as the 3000 is mostly standard micro-ATX, you could buy an ASRock Socket 478 board plus a Socket 478 cooler and 2gb of DDR2 memory (all for under $100), install it, and get lucky when XP reboots and you can reactivate it over the 1-800 line. (Your OEM license remains valid with a mainboard swap provided the new mainboard is similar to the original.) All the case connectors apart from the front audio port (which is a Soundblaster-compatible design) will work. I should also mention that there is a ninth, non-standard wire on the USB header that should be removed. (It shorted out the power supply when used with a Foxconn G41 board.)  

And what would a shop do that I cannot?

I would assume the next step would be to swap out known good working components (motherboard, cpu) ?

PK

They can swap parts but only charge you what you actually need. At least, that's what our local guy does.

My other thought is I wouldn't spend $50 on a motherboard for a 6 year old system worth maybe $75 if I wasn't sure that was the problem.

I was finally able to get the system to boot again last night.  

An error popped up on the screen that said something like "The system has failed to boot several times at the point (64K)..."

Also, one other thing to note is that when i run WhoCrashed within Windows to analyze the dump files, the culprit is always HAL.dll.

Does this shed any more light on the issue?

pk

That could be a RAM issue (first 64K of RAM).

Reseat all the RAM modules in their slots.

If the problem isn't corrected, remove all RAM modules except the one in slot 1. If that fails, swap the other modules into slot 1. If all the others work in slot 1, you probably need to replace the module that was originally in slot 1. (Keep track of which module was in which slot before you start swapping. :emotion-5: )

Always power off, unplug and press/hold power button for ~15 sec before removing/adding any hardware.

Ron

I have reseated the RAM several times and get the same results. There is just one stick of RAM installed.

I was able to run a full cycle of memtest a few days ago and no errors were returned.

I can pull this RAM and install it in a nearly identical machine (another Dell 3000) and it boots no problem.  I am going to start memtest with just this RAM module installed and run it all night.

I really think we are looking at a motherboard issue.

PK

I have reseated the RAM several times and get the same results. There is just one stick of RAM installed. I was able to run a full cycle of memtest a few days ago and no errors were returned. I can pull this RAM and install it in a nearly identical machine (another Dell 3000) and it boots no problem.  I am going to start memtest with just this RAM module installed and run it all night. I really think we are looking at a motherboard issue.  PK

So is it running now or not? And are you still getting error messages? If it was having a problem and BIOS was reporting the 64K error but then you cleared BIOS, that should have deleted the error report.

When was the last time the motherboard battery was replaced? If it's more than 2-3 years old, it may be weak or dead and that could scramble BIOS settings.

Ron

If it's XP reactivation that's holding you back, I will get you a definitive answer on that question.

I concede that as it cost $125 to buy an E5200 OEM dual core CPU, Rosewill CPU cooler, Foxconn G41 mainboard, and 2gb DDR3 RAM, it might not make good sense to spend $95 on a 478 upgrade board, cooler, and 2gb DDR2 memory ... especially considering that the former will fit in the 3000 case just as well as the latter.

This PC actually belongs to a friend at work. That is what i told her today. If it is the motherboard, this machine is certainly not worth the expense of replacing it (and the risk of MS being jerks and not letting me reauthenticate the OEM license on a different motherboard).

I entered "oobe/msoobe /a" in the Run dialog, but the activation wizard said XP was already activated. I thought a major hardware change like a mainboard change was supposed to trigger a prompt for reactivation?

I pretty much gave up on the 3000. I pulled that RAM and put it into a nearly identical 3000 and ran memtest for nearly 24 hours. No problems at all.

I never did try clearing the CMOS.  My gut just says its the motherboard.

Instead, I am trying to improve an Optiplex GX260 that she also had. I am running into issues with adding a video card, however.

See post http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3515/t/19362587.aspx

Any input there would be appreciated.

Thanks for all the help with this issue, though.

PK

For my last word on the activation issue, I clean-installed XP Home on the Gigabyte 3000 with a retail CD and key. At boot time, an activation notice appeared, but I closed it. The "keys" icon remained in the system tray. I then ran the XP product key utility from Microsoft and entered the product key from the COA. The tool communicated with the server and a message appeared saying the product key change was successful. Finally, I opened the System Tools activation utility; it said that XP was already activated. A check of the System properties showed (under  "Registered To")  an OEM license key.

I did nothing underhanded in this; the utility came straight from support.microsoft.com. Oh, and no call to the1-800 line was needed.

For the user on a budget, this will buy some time before having to incur the expense of Windows 7, and the cost of the repairs will not be lost on obsolete parts.

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled OSX Snow Leopard. :)