Dell Precision WorkStation 650 bios load hangs at progress bar?

So here are the specs first;

Dell Precision WorkStation 650

Bios version - A05

OS: Windows XP x86

Graphics: Nvidia Quadro FX 3000

Ram: 4Gb (tested multiple ways. 100% sure they are good)

Chipset drivers: Updated to v4.1.1012, A12

:::BIOS:::

Drive config. setup:

Disk 0 = auto

Disk 1 = off

*all others are set to off

Everything else is at default state.

My issue is as follows;

When powered on, the dell logo displays and the bios progress bar begins to fill. Once this reaches roughly 70% the bar freezes. The keys become unresponsive and the only option is to manually power down. If left unchecked, it will remain frozen in that state indefinitely. 

If I turn on the machine and quickly enter the setup menu before the progress bar freezes, I can simply exit the bios and Windows will load normally. This ONLY works if I dont change any settings in the bios (saving settings and exiting reloads the bios and locks up again)  Both cold boot and restarting from a working state produce the same result and the bios isn't producing ANYTHING in the log file. Even though this is a bios/hardware issue and not a windows issue I still checked the event logs as well just to thwart any suggestions to do so. (No issues there either)

I have also used "fixboot" and "fixmbr" with no change. Yes, I ran them independently starting with fixboot and restarted with no change before I ran fixmbr.

Has anyone heard of this before?

Any advice would be great!