BIOS Power Failure?

Question

I lost a harddrive (another post) and upon the receipt of my new one, I decided to upgrade my 8000 Inspiron to the A23 BIOS (was A02).  Upgrade went great.   Decided to upgrade my wife's BIOS (another 8000 Inspiron) and the load seemed to go great.  Upon reboot, with the floppy still in the drive, the DOS message stated BIOS upgrade complete, remove BIOS disk and reboot.   So I did, and my wife's computer will not boot up...   I've attempted to restart numerous times.  Power indication lites show up for the power, and the HD, but I never receive the Dell screen, and the HD light is solid green (ie no indication of drive rotation).  Since I do not receive the Dell screen, nor can access BIOS (F2), I believe there is something other than power, or HD causing this issue.  Internal CD drive does an initial spin up and can open.  Floppy drive will 'spin up' with a disk but quickly goes dormant.  Removal of floppy and battery have no affect.   Could it be the BIOS upgrade?!

johnallg · Answer

Sure sounds like it....

leduke30 · Answer

If you did it while docked, that may be the reason. Dell always recommends undocking before Flashing and so do I .

You can try removing the Keyboard and unplug the Touchpad Plug, and leave it unplugged overnight. That also unplugs the CMOS Battery on these 8000s; see if you can reset the BIOS to default which will allow you to boot with a floppy if successful. If you can, reflash undocked. If you can't, contact me by Private Message at the page top

Latitude C800
1000mhz Pentium III
512mb PC133 RAM (1 Module)
40gb Hitachi 7200rpm-HTE726040M9AT00-UDMA5
HL-DT-ST-GCC-4240N CDRW/DVDROM in Fixed Bay
LS-120 SuperFloppy in ModularBay
Windows XP Pro SP1
FanGui 2.20
ATI M4 32mb Video Card
C/Dock II

Message Edited by leduke30 on 03-08-2005 04:29 PM

Jake_99 · Answer

So what do I do now?

Okay another side note...my wife's computer was possibly having these issues before the BIOS upgrade. I believed it to be the display as not turning on vs the computer. Since she primarily utilizes a docking station, external monitor, and generally leaves the computer running (due to the display thang), this previous problem was a nuisance but not a show stopper. Our current problem is a show stopper.

Why would the BIOS, which seemed to load just like it did on my laptop, cause this issue? I used the same diskette, and conducted the update 5-10 minutes after I completed mine.

In addition, lately it was noted that the screen saver would not activate. This was believed to be due to her desktop program (changes out the desktop picture on a daily basis). Manual use of + L was used to switch user (lock computer).

Message Edited by Jake_99 on 03-08-200504:19 PM

Oh yeah, also utilized another HD to verify that wasn't the problem. The alternate HD showed no change in current issue (unable to boot up).

Message Edited by Jake_99 on 03-08-200504:21 PM

Message Edited by Jake_99 on 03-08-2005 04:21 PM

Jake_99 · Answer

Thanks for the input. Will give it a shot. Wife's computer is currently apart. I took it apart last night but did not disconnect the keyboard and pad. I was thinking it was a disconnected part vs actively disconnecting the parts.

BTW, my Inspiron was docked when I did the BIOS upgrade and everything went fine. My wife's Inspiron did not fair as well.

leduke30 · Answer

Well, you were  lucky once, but not twice.

Jake_99 · Answer

No joy this morning.  Sent leduke30 a follow-up, throw-me-a-life-vest, message... Could this be that my CMOS battery is dead?  Is this battery next to the mouse pad connection?

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BIOS Power Failure?

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