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Dimension E310: Won't boot, lights 1 & 4 on.
I have a Dimension E310 that is giving me problems booting. It will get stuck in the BIOS load with lights 1 & 4 on. Sometimes it will take several tries to get past this point. If I can get it to boot the system works fine, no blue screens, etc. A couple of times after several retries it will display a screen that says it failed at checkpoint Ithr.
I upgraded my BIOS from A03 to A04 and then I could not get it to boot at all until I re-seated my memory cards.
The manual does not have any information as to what is wrong when lights 1 & 4 are lit. Anyone have any ideas?
dageezerus
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March 14th, 2008 12:00
1 & 4 is a possible hard drive error. See if you can boot to the F12 menu and run hard drive diagnostics. If not, boot to you Dell Dimension Resource CD, and run diags from there.
Sounds like the HDD is failing
edgizmo
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March 16th, 2008 12:00
I ran all of the diagnostics yesterday and nothing came up as an error. Probably time for a new hard drive, eh?
Thanks,
Keith
dageezerus
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March 16th, 2008 13:00
That would be my next step, yes
edgizmo
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March 17th, 2008 12:00
I bought a new hard drive and installed it along with a new cable. I copied all my file over and it booted fine while I had the case open. I put the case back together and attached the cable for my Belkin USB hub (it is too short to remain attached while I'm working on the system), and the same problem happened.
So I changed which USB port that the cable for the hub was plugged in to, and the system seems to be working just fine. For some reason the USB port was interfering with the hard drive??
I do like the new drive. It is faster, quieter, and about twice the capacity of my old drive. Since this doesn't appear to be a drive problem, I'm assuming my old drive is fine. I may get an external enclosure for it.
Thanks for your help.