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Optiplex 745 sometimes freezes on boot splash page
I recently got hold of a used Optiplex 745 (Intel E6400 CPU @2.13GHz, 2GB RAM) which seems, from an almost complete absence of internal dust, to have been very little used.
It works perfectly other than the problem described in the thread title. When it's switched on, "sometimes" (maybe 2 out of every 3 attempts), the screen freezes on the Dell boot splash page with the progress bar (between Optiplex 745 and BIOS 2.6.6) stopping well before reaching the end of its travel.
It seems to stop either half-way through (under the "7" in Optiplex 745) or after only 25% of its travel.
It's interesting that it stops, apparently, at exactly one or other of those two points every time.
Immediately after, if I switch the machine off and back on, it will boot perfectly about 95% of the time. Otherwise, I might have to stop/restart a third time to get it to boot.
While Google has found countless instances of Desktops freezing while displaying the boot splash, all that I've come across seem to be "permanent" problems. In other words, booting is just not possible. In my case, however, I can boot and the machine seems to be working perfectly other than this occasional glitch.
Can anybody shine a light on what might be happening here? And should I be worried?
paulfxh
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November 17th, 2014 15:00
Hi Ron
Thanks for your suggestions. Yes, I should have given more information in my first post. In fact, the form factor is SFF, the power button remains green before during and after the freeze, the diagnostic lights 1,2 and 3 light up ("another failure has occurred") and no beeps are heard. I don't know when the cmos battery was changed last as I only got this machine just over a week ago.
However, it seems the problem is now solved although note that I didn't say that I understood why it's solved.
I had been doing a lot of fiddling around trying to get this little machine running well. When I finally got some OSes (dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu) installed on the HDD, I had two wireless keyboard/mouse sets hooked up through usb dongles -- not intentionally, but that's what happened.
That's when I started noticing the problem described in my first post.
As I needed one kbd/mouse for another computer, I removed the dongles (this one had an individual dongle for kbd and another for the mouse) and, thereafter, I have not had a single instance of the freezing problem despite having started the machine at least 30 times since then.
As a test, I plugged in the two dongles from the kbd/mouse set as before while leaving the single dongle for the other kbd/mouse set plugged in. In this situation, the boot froze in two out of three attempts.
So having the two kbd/mouse sets hooked up seemed to be the problem.
But why? I'm baffled.
RoHe
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November 16th, 2014 15:00
What form factor is this system (desktop, tower, small, ultra small)?
What color is power button when it stalls and is it steady or blinking? What color are the 4 diagnostic LEDs when it stalls? Look up error codes in the manual (p 180-181).
When was last time motherboard battery was replaced?
Have you run RAM diagnostics and extended hard drive tests? (Reboot and press F12. Go to Utilities partition to run the tests, assuming they're on this hard drive).
RoHe
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November 17th, 2014 15:00
Are you saying these are both USB keyboards/mice connected to non-USB ports? Or non-USB keyboards/mice connected to USB ports?
But does it really matter? You solved the problem and know the cause, so just don't do that again.
paulfxh
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November 20th, 2014 00:00
Both keyboards and both mice are wireless and "talk" to the computer through the usb dongles.
Good advice. Thank you.