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MTFaulknerTN
2 Posts
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1836
September 7th, 2006 19:00
Technically challenged -Please help!
Hi, everyone. I'm not really of the computer generation and am extremely technically challenged.
I have a Dimension 4600, and it just developed a really annoying problem. I shut the system down properly for the Labor Day holiday, and when I returned last night, I couldn't get the system to stay booted. When the system starts, it goes through the booting process as normal, but just when all of the icons appear, the screen goes black, and the system restarts again. It does this on a continuous loop, so that I can never even access the start menu.
I read through the owner's manual for help. I did notice that the hard drive activity light on the front dims, and the diagnostic lights on the back flash B and C yellow, then A yellow, the C an D yellow, before the system reboots.
Since I can't access anything from the Start menu before the system shuts down, I hit F12 and went through all the diagnostic tests. Now, here's the conundrum. All of the tests passed! I did the Express, Extended, and Custom, and there were no error messages. I thought maybe there was problem with the power source, so I moved the CPU to different outlets in the house, but the system still will not boot and stay on.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
MTFaulknerTN
2 Posts
176
0
Posted September 8th, 2006 18:00
Thanks DaGeezerUS. I followed your instructions, but it won't let me boot from the CD drive, and when I tried to restore the system, I keep getting the following error message:
"The following file is missing or corrupted \ system 32\hal.dll "
I rescanned diagnostic tests and received the following error messages
BIOS reported a bad command error code 1100:0222, 1100:0322, 1100: 0422
DELL-Donald K
2 Intern
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3969 Posts
176
0
Posted September 8th, 2006 17:00
If you have a Windows XP CD, boot to the CD, select R for recovery console & see if you can get to the recovery console. If the system reboots at that point, then the partition table is corrupted & you'll likely need to re-install windows to resolve.
If you can access recovery console, then type exit & reboot & see if you can get back in to windows (Don't laugh, I've seen this work) if the rebooting continues, then boot back to recovery console & run the command CHKDSK /R & after that BOOTCFG /Rebuild
DELL-Donald K
#IWork4Dell