The XPS GEN5 challenge - Round 2

Isn't it time to put that old geezer out to pasture? :emotion-4:

What color are the 4 diagnostic LEDs on the front panel when screen goes blank? If not all green, look up the error code in the manual. And is the power button green or amber, steady or blinking?

What happens if you boot in Safe Mode? (Helps if you know what exactly version of Windows is running. )

You can try clearing BIOS:

1. Power off and unplug
2. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec.
3. Open case and remove motherboard battery
4. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
5. Install the new RAM and make sure it's seated correctly.
6. Reinstall battery - use a fresh one if this one is old
7. Close up and try to boot with only mouse, monitor and keyboard attached...

Hello Ron, sooooooooooo good to see you online again these days. How have you been? Hope all is well. Maybe your correct about both my "ol Geezer" xps machine and the owner for that matter.... But gosh it was working so good and sounding well while I was converting some vinyl records to CD. Bought a turntable with UBS plugin with the money I saved NOT buying another PC. Now if I can get up to par at using audacity software I may have some smooth tuneage to listen to while grazing in the pasture.

Sorry for the late reply but was Christmas shopping and visiting the parents today. I'll put in the new RAM tomorrow and give it a power up to respond to your questions. OS should be 64 bit XP home edition.

Thought I tried to get into safe mode by pressing f12 but when the screen goes black I couldn't tell where I was.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, if I clear the BIOS will I be loading the OS and all that from round 1? Please say no.... You haven't forgotten what an Amateur (with capitol A) your dealing with here did you?

Dan

Your hard drive is physically bad.  You have to reinstall on a new working hard drive.

Ron, with the new RAM installed I get:

1, I hear two beeps

2, Diagnostic lights 1,2,3 are lit up green (Another Failure Has Occurred) – Ensure that the cables are connected to the system board from the hard drive and CD DVD drives. (I received these before and did check the plugs at that time.)

Then I powered down and removed the cover to the hard drive and pressed the band cables into the hard drive and noticed that the other wire connector actually does wiggle a bit so I’ll use some tape to keep it set into the plug more securely.

When I powered back up I received no beeps and no diagnostic lights but the screen shows a dell screen with the progress bar and then quickly shows a windows screen and finally returns to black as I see the green disk light flickering and hear the hard drive being read. After sometime the geezer seems to be powered up and running with no display, no diagnostic lights and power light solid green .

Then I powered down. Reset the wire connector to the hard drive with a bit of tape. Powered back up and pressed f8 several times. The displayed showed something very quickly before going to black. Probably the safe mode screen but no display, no beeps, no diagnostic lights and power light solid green after that.

Brought the geezer down and I hear the hard drive getting read. I  restarted and I received no beeps and no diagnostic lights but the screen shows a dell screen with the progress bar and then quickly shows a windows screen (I saw an A4 displayed. Isn’t that part of the windows version I have?) and since I had the room light low the display tried to brighten to show something else but I could not make it out. Finally returns to black as I see the green disk light flickering and hear the hard drive being read. After sometime the geezer seems to be powered up and running with no display, no diagnostic lights and power light solid green. Oh and display light is green. I caught it at yellow during one of these restarts since I tried to update this email and the machine probably went into sleep mode. Also when I move the mouse I can hear the hard drive getting read but still no display.

.  

Computers are so weird or is it just me,

Dan

There are no soft repairs for a physically bad drive.  Reinstalling on a bad drive wont help either.

You can F12 boot a live linux cd and it will show everything working fine EXCEPT the hard drive.

LUPU 5.2 works on this model.

Download Lupu 528.005 -> http://diddywahdiddy.net/Puppy500/lupu-528.005.iso
8ad170c46b523436776398fa5ce39fa4

You can also make this a bootable usb flash drive with the universal installer.  The entire setup is 130 megs which fits on a CD or tiny usb flash drive.

https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

You get into Safe Mode on Win XP systems by immediately pressing F8 at boot. Don't wait for the screen to go black.

If you clear BIOS by removing the battery, you won't have to reinstall BIOS. All that does is reset BIOS to its default settings and forces BIOS to re-examine what hardware is installed.

Thanks for the thoughts SpeedStep. It might come down to that bad hard drive. That would mean I caused the hard drive to fail since it was working just the day before I attempted to install the new RAM. The hard drive is only about a year old as well since Rohe helped my reinstall when I replaced the drive back then as well. Going to work through other possibilities before revisiting the hard  drive again.

Yep, I had to google it but I did hit f8 for safe mode but outcome was the same. I'll give your instruction for clearing BIOS a go this afternoon after running errands. Thanks again Ron.

Video card? Make sure it's seated correctly in its slot.

And if available, swap in a known-working video card...

Went through the BIOS reset procedure. A few weird things. Once I reconnected the power cord it seems like the machine powered up without my hitting the power button. My finger was on it but not much pressure. Went on about its way and I hit the 2 beeps and diagnostic light 1,2,3 in green again. Without doing anything I powered off by holding the power button in. Then I restarted and it came up with a message press f1 to continue or f2 to enter setup. Of course it was to fast the 1st time so I hit f1 and ended up with a dark screen (oh yeah and I felt the cards and all felt pretty solid. I have no other). I held the power button in to power down an rebooted. This time I could read the f2 part and entered f2 the setup screen was displayed for an instant but then screen went dark. Gosh those screens remind me of round 1 too much.......  

When you reconnect the power cord to the AC, the PC will power up -very briefly- to check the status of the AC Recovery option in BIOS. If that option is set to "do nothing" the PC will power off again. If it's set to "reboot" the PC will automatically boot without pressing the power button. All perfectly normal.

Have you tested this monitor on a working PC, or a known working monitor on this PC?

Two beeps is a RAM problem, but it could be PC RAM or video card RAM.  You can try pulling all RAM except the one in slot 1, clear BIOS by pulling the battery and pressing/holding the power button for ~15 sec before reinstalling the battery. Then see if it boots. If not, swap all RAM modules, one at a time, into slot 1. If none work there, try them one at a time in slot 2.  If they all work in slot 1, add a second module to slot 2, etc.

What video ports are on the video card and what input signals does the monitor support? You might try using a different output port on the video card, assuming the monitor supports that alternative input, and/or if you can buy/borrow an inexpensive adapter to change the PC port's output signal into something the monitor supports.

If none of that works, this may be the video card. Don't know if you're willing to invest more $$ into this system to test a new video card, which may or not solve the problem. Any chance you can borrow a video card from somebody to test in this system?

I guess that makes sense then and I can be prepared for next time.

I'll have to see if I can test the monitor in some way on something. The monitor does show parts of the start up process though. I'll be working my way through your questions and requests. Wished we could pinpoint the prob. Who said this was going to be easy??? oh yeah, nobody! unless it was the guy who sold me this RAM...... 8-(

I'll respond back with progress...

Thanks,

Dan

I plugged the monitor into my laptop PC VGA port. The PC beeped as it does when it recognizes new hardware. The yellow standby light changed to green on the monitor but the monitor didn’t show what was displayed on the laptop screen when I brought the laptop out of sleep mode. Guess I could have rebooted but not sure if it would have done anything differently.

I didn’t get any changes shuffling around the RAM from slot 1 or 2. The monitor shows the dell logo and processor logo and goes to black. I’m not even seeing the windows logo anymore. The Desktop gives the two beeps and  shows light 123 in green. Strange though that even the original Ram doesn’t work any longer.

If the Graphics card was bad would it show anything at all, not even the dell logo? Don’t really have access to Graphics card to try another.  Wished we were more certain the issue but if it fixes the issue i could try and find a graphics card. Frustrating!

Dan

Well, you need to convince yourself the monitor works somewhere else before you can go much further. Do you need to go into Windows settings on the lappy to enable a second display?

When PC boots, it puts things on the screen (eg logos etc) using very basic video output. But if the card (or monitor) is damaged, it may not correctly use a "higher" type of video signal.

If your monitor and video card share other types of video ports, you might try using some other output on PC>input on monitor, in case the interface you've been using has failed on either component.

And/or, have you tried a different video cable, even if it's the same type as the one you've been trying to use, in case there's just a cable failure?