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Dell Dimension freezes on startup before BIOS screen
My machine is Dell Dimension XPS T600r (Pentium II, 600 MHz, 786 MB memory)
When I start my PC, it briefly displays the video card info (VIDIA TNT2), then displays
the blue WWW.DELL.COM logo (half-size in upper right corner) on a black screen and freezes
at that point. The four diagnostic LEDs on the read panel are green, green, green, yellow,
which the manual says is "Other failure" (presumably, not a memory, video, PCI bus, IDE bus,
USB port or BIOS problem), and directs me to their help staff. The machine is out of warranty.
Pressing F8 or Ctrl-Alt-Del or any other key seems to have no effect before, during or
after this freeze. Waiting an hour makes no difference. I hear no disk activity.
I've disconnected unneeded peripherals (ethernet and all USB connections except mouse
and keyboard) which made no difference. I removed the SCSI card and hard drive and
the IDE hard drive, the only two drives, which made no difference. I tried removing
the last memory module I added (a year ago) with no difference. I tried booting off a
floppy or CD with no success. This freeze seems to happen before any drives are accessed.
What's the next step in diagnosing the problem? Would using a null modem cable from another
machine work to access it? I believe hooking up another bootable drive wouldn't have any effect.
(My slave drive is bootable if I wanted to try that as master.)
What did I last do before this happened?
Until recently I worked at Sun Microsystems, which required I install a program called xpneuter which
would run at each startup. It has no uninstall program, so I removed the executable and disabled
its checkbox in the Start > Run > msconfig > Startup tab. When I rebooted, I got a
startup configuration dialog box with the startup checkbox unchecked. After living with
this for a day through several reboots, I decided to put the xpneuter executables back and
choose "Normal startup". The next reboot froze as mentioned above.
I've searched Dell and the Internet for help but haven't found any.
Thanks in advance for any pointers or tips you can provide.
-Doug
When I start my PC, it briefly displays the video card info (VIDIA TNT2), then displays
the blue WWW.DELL.COM logo (half-size in upper right corner) on a black screen and freezes
at that point. The four diagnostic LEDs on the read panel are green, green, green, yellow,
which the manual says is "Other failure" (presumably, not a memory, video, PCI bus, IDE bus,
USB port or BIOS problem), and directs me to their help staff. The machine is out of warranty.
Pressing F8 or Ctrl-Alt-Del or any other key seems to have no effect before, during or
after this freeze. Waiting an hour makes no difference. I hear no disk activity.
I've disconnected unneeded peripherals (ethernet and all USB connections except mouse
and keyboard) which made no difference. I removed the SCSI card and hard drive and
the IDE hard drive, the only two drives, which made no difference. I tried removing
the last memory module I added (a year ago) with no difference. I tried booting off a
floppy or CD with no success. This freeze seems to happen before any drives are accessed.
What's the next step in diagnosing the problem? Would using a null modem cable from another
machine work to access it? I believe hooking up another bootable drive wouldn't have any effect.
(My slave drive is bootable if I wanted to try that as master.)
What did I last do before this happened?
Until recently I worked at Sun Microsystems, which required I install a program called xpneuter which
would run at each startup. It has no uninstall program, so I removed the executable and disabled
its checkbox in the Start > Run > msconfig > Startup tab. When I rebooted, I got a
startup configuration dialog box with the startup checkbox unchecked. After living with
this for a day through several reboots, I decided to put the xpneuter executables back and
choose "Normal startup". The next reboot froze as mentioned above.
I've searched Dell and the Internet for help but haven't found any.
Thanks in advance for any pointers or tips you can provide.
-Doug
Majestic
9.4K Posts
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September 12th, 2005 12:00
If the machine still fails to boot then strip the motherboard down to the bare minimum. By bare minimum I mean remove all expansion cards, disconnect all drives and leave just the processor, memory and graphics card in the machine after reseating them. If the computer boots this way then start connecting each device one at a time until the no boot scenario returns. This would then indicate which device has failed and is causing the problem. Also try booting the system without the keyboard, mouse or any other device plugged into the rear of the system. If you have more than one memory module installed then try booting with only one and then swap them around and try again. If this procedure doesn't resolve the problem then you maybe looking at a situation where the motherboard has failed.
dougkramer
3 Posts
0
September 12th, 2005 14:00
And it booted up without the Startup Configuration box.
I'll keep your email in my tips file.
Do you have a PayPal account I can transfer $50 into? Your advice was timely and well worth it.
-Doug
Majestic
9.4K Posts
0
September 12th, 2005 17:00
dougkramer
3 Posts
0
September 13th, 2005 01:00