Tryng to diagnose a problem with a friends computer. It is a Dell Latitude CPi Pentium 2, and running XP Home. Anyway when he started the computer at his house, the regular Dell screen appeared, but the loading bar only filled about 90 % and then there were three sentences describing the problem and what to do. I did not write the sentences down, because I thought I would do it later at my house. Well I started the computer about 20 plus times and have not gotten that message again. The best I can remember is that they said something about a problem with a "device". The computer did not boot at that point, and had to be manually shut down. Now, device to me means something like the CD Rom, Battery pack, or the PCMCIA card that is in the side of the computer. My first thought was that one of those devices was not making a good connection, so I tried loosening each of those three items to see if I could get the error message back. No luck. I even left each of the three half way out, and still no error messages. The only other 'device " I can think of is the power supply itself. I tried just barely plugging it in the side, but again no error message. I really don't think it can be the power supply--either you have power or not.
Now---I have been getting a different error message. It says " DISKETTE DRIVE 0 SEEK FAILURE'. Then another message appears, not sure but I think it says something about another drive. Then the computer continues to boot properly. So I went into the setup. The CD Rom was set as the first boot device, and the hard drive was the second. I set the hard drive to be the first boot device, and the CD Rom as the second. There is no floppy. Maybe that will fix the problem ?? Any other suggestions ? I know it is hard to diagnose without knowing what those three sentences said, but that is all I got right now. Thanks for reading this long post.