Help with a fresh install on an E520

Have you disconnected all peripherals except mouse, monitor & keyboard?

If BIOS is set to RAID AUTODETECT/ATA, you should not load the SATA drivers. If it's set to RAID, then you have to load the SATA drivers. It's either one way or the other, you can't mix/match them.

Have you tried reseating RAM and PCI cards in their slots? Have you tried installing XP after removing all PCI cards except video?

Have you tried a different SATA cable, and/or checked that it's properly connected at both ends? Is there a jumper setting on the HD that needs to be changed?

Have you tried cleaning NVRAM by disconnecting PC from the wall, removing the battery from the motherboard and pressing/holding the power button on front of the tower for ~30 sec?

And if you're still under warranty, contact Dell Tech Support for assistance.

Ron 

Thanks for your response and help.

The only peripherals in use are monitor, keyboard and mouse.  I've even tried the boot with no mouse (as irq 12 seemingly pointed to by Ubuntu is usually the mouse interrupt.)

I tried all the combinations (I guess it seems, even the invalid ones) of RAID non-RAID drivers and BIOS settings.  None of those options worked.

All the PCI card slots are empty.  RAM was reseated when I installed known good RAM.  I even tried different different memory slots on the motherboard to rule out a bad socket.

I've tried the new HDD and used new cables with it, checking the HDD jumpers as well and swapping to different ports on the mother board.  The BIOS does see the HDD.

I hadn't tried clearing the NVRAM so I did that this morning.  No change, the symptoms persist.

Unfortunately the system is out of warranty.

Keith

What color are the diagnostics LEDs on the tower?

Bum motherboard? :(

Ron 

All four diagnostic lights display solid green and then turn off.  Seems to indicate normal operation.

Yes, I'm afraid the only component left IS the motherboard..

Thanks for the help and suggestions..  I guess it's off to eBay to price a motherboard..

Hang in for a bit. I've asked the forum gurus if they have any useful ideas, since I don't seem to be of any help here.

Ron 

Maybe this can help

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310760/en-us

Other suggestions.

1. Update the bios to the latest version if it is not already.

2.  Shut down the PC, unplug the power cord and hold the power button in for 15 seconds.

Open the case and remove the cmos battery for 15 Minutes (note the polarity of the battery before removal) Reinsert the battery after 15 Minutes, close the case and plug it in, then do the following before doing anything else. (replace cmos battery with a new one if it is older than 3 years) You may want to replace it in your case, a faulty cmos battery can cause all kinds of weird problems.

Power up the PC
* Watch the keyboard lights. When they flash, tap the F2 key
* The message, Entering Setup should appear
* Down arrow to Maintenance
* Choose Load Defaults
* Click Continue - Restore factory defaults

If XP install fails again, repeat the procedure, this time leave the cmos battery out for 24 hours.

This is indeed in "interesting" problem.

Since you get the problem in linux as well as Windows then I'm pretty sure its not a driver issue.  The latest BIOS for the E520 is http://ftp.dell.com/bios/DM061-020400.EXE (v 2.4.0 from July 2007), and I agree with the others suggestion to update to or reinstall it.

When booting off the linux CD, did you happen to notice what it loaded just before it starts throwing the "unexpected irq trap" message?  That might give us a clue to what is failing ...

There is a jumper on the motherboard for clearing the CMOS.  You might want to try that before mombodog's suggestion, simply because its faster.  The directions for this are on page 121 of the Owners Manual.  If that doesn't work then I also recommend the steps mombodog listed for replacing the battery and/or resetting the CMOS.

The only other thing I can think of, unfortunately, is the motherboard itself.

Knerby,

I just experienced an almost identical problem with an Inspiron E1505.  As with your E520, it passed all internal diagnostics, including the DST (Drive Short Test), yet kept giving a "boot sector not found on internal hard drive" at boot.  Would not boot UBCD, Windows XP MCE 2005, or Windows XP Pro CD.  All started loading drivers then hung at blank Blue screen, no messages.  Remove hard drive.  UBCD would boot and OSes would boot to Setup screen.  Reinstalled HD. Removed DVD/CD drive, and thesystem gave the same error. 

I removed the coin-cell CMOS battery, left it out for 24 hours.  No change.  I flashed BIOS to latest.  Same result.  Installed hard drive in another E1505.  It booted fine.  Installed the other E1505 hard drive in the problem machine, and once again received "boot sector not found..." error.

I made images of all four partitions by connecting the drive to my bench machine, then copied the client's data files to DVD.  I installed a brand new, blank 80Gb Toshiba laptop drive.  Still couldn't boot with any OS. Loaded drivers, then blank blue screen.

For the time being, I have laid it aside.  I'm about 95% sure that the motherboard is either defective or has a critical drive controller circuit thats hung in an undefined state.  The client does not want to spend the money to replace the motherboard.

In closing, I would like to note that the the kmxstart.sys file is part of Computer Associates firewall protection engine, and has a known security vulnerability.  I had a similar problem with a bug that corrupted the virtual engine startup files of an Internet Security program.  The solution in that case was to do a repair install of XP to replace the system files, yet preserve the client's existing data files and installed applications.

Tony 

The system is running the latest BIOS 2.4.0 and I've refreshed it.  I followed the suggestion to clear NVRAM (the long way) and then using the motherboard jumpers.  I replaced the CMOS battery as well because they are fairly inexpensive

The Ubunto cd boots to a graphical interface that prompts for the users language and then presents an option screen to 'Run from CD', 'Install the distro' and a few other options.  Selecting either 'Run from CD' or 'Install to HDD' opens another window with a progress bar that says "Loading linux kernel...".  When the progress bar reaches the end, the display flips to text mode and fills with lines of the "unexpected irq trap" error message.  Each line of that error is consecutively numbered, so you can see it's constantly repeating and not hung.  If there's another error message that preceeds the 'trap' message, it is replaced so fast as to be unreadable.

Thanks again for your suggestions!!

Knerby,

Sure looks like you got a can of worms there! :o

My thanks, as well, to all who've offered suggestions. I hope one of their ideas will put the worms back where they belong.

Ron