Thank you for replying, Jack. I did determine that the cause was 'other failure' because the first 3 lights were green and the last was yellow. However, after I reset the CMOS jumper pins, all lights are green.
I can't find my Windows CD for the life of me. I have to look harder because it would be nice if I could at least try that. So you are saying that my power supply is probably ok? I don't even know how to tell if it is or not.
Have you determined the status of the diagnostic LEDs? See the Advanced Troubleshooting portion of your manual to see if the LED's or power light give any hints as to the problem.
One thing you could try is to boot from your Windows Installation CD; if you can boot from the CD you have at least narrowed the problem from being a system-wide failure.
Usually the most catastrophic effect from a USB problem is a short on the power lines, but these are current limited and usually shut down the power supply. You might simply have a hard drive problem coincidental to the USB problem.
Have you determined the status of the diagnostic LEDs? See the Advanced Troubleshooting portion of your manual to see if the LED's or power light give any hints as to the problem.
One thing you could try is to boot from your Windows Installation CD; if you can boot from the CD you have at least narrowed the problem from being a system-wide failure.
Usually the most catastrophic effect from a USB problem is a short on the power lines, but these are current limited and usually shut down the power supply. You might simply have a hard drive problem coincidental to the USB problem.
Once, when pressing in a USB plug I bent one of the pins in the socket so that it shorted out, and a chip on the Foxconn mainboard overheated with a red glow and began to smoke!
However, I've noticed that Dells tend to be more resilient and that resetting the CMOS is usually enough to restore the mainboard to working condition.
Well, THAT sounds like fun. I'm glad to say that I did not see any smoke nor did I hear a pop, but so far resetting the CMOS hasn't worked for me. In the absence of finding the Windows CD, do you think removing the battery might help?
Removing the battery will set the CMOS back to its defaults, so it can't hurt, but I thought you said you had tried that already.
You stated in your original post that you could use F12 to reach the one time boot menu; can you also press F2 and navigate the system setup menu? If you can do that, and almost boot up (reaching a blue screen means that Windows has begun to load), there should be nothing wrong with your power supply. Except that you have had a hardware fault I would lean more toward a corrupted Windows loader for your troubles. You really need to try an alternate boot device, such as the Windows installation CD in your optical drive. If the CD boots I would say that the computer is having trouble reading data from the hard drive. This can result either from corrupted files on the drive, or a failing drive.
Thanks again. All I did was reset the jumper pins. I did not remove the battery. I will search valiantly for the Windows CD - I know I have it somewhere... As I do not have internet access at home, I will report on my efforts tomorrow.
I am online from home and I don't know how I did it.
I found the Windows installation CD. It wasn't such a good thing because it wouldn't let me run the repair option and the only other option was to do a new installation. I had no idea how the NTFS file system is selected and didn't want to screw stuff up, so I rebooted into the boot options and ran the last known good configuration. I don't know how old it is. How do I find that info?
Anyway, I rebooted to run a check of the disk configuration and that must have gone ok because it proceeded to boot up. I then ran an error check on the C: drive and got a fail with a return code of 7.
I just completed a backup of my C: drive documents. whew.
The important part is that the computer booted ok from the CD. The computer itself is therefore ok, and if there is a problem, it is associated with the hard drive. Backing up your data was a very good thing to do.
The last known good configuration is the registry from the last time the computer booted without any problems. It should be ok to run from that. The return code you received often indicates a hardware failure, but since you had no trouble until the hardware error, it might also be from corrupted data on the drive. If you go back to the diagnostic using F12 during the self test after startup you should be able to run a detailed test of the hard drive. It's been a while since I performed one of these, but I believe you might need to run the quick test first. After that you can get to a menu that allows you to choose specific tests. Choose the test for the hard drive and allow it to run to completion; it can take a while so be patient.
If the hard drive produces no further errors you can probably re-install to get a clean installation again. Unfortunately you likely can't do the repair installation because the version of Windows on your hard drive has a later service pack than does your installation disk. If you wish you can Google nLite and learn how to slipstream a service pack into a Windows installation CD that you make using your existing installation CD and the Service Pack 3 update. If you succeed in doing this you will likely be able to use the new CD to perform a repair.
If the diagnostic does find additional errors you have a hard drive that is close to failure and you will need to replace it.
I am now running directly from the hard drive. I did run that test of the hard drive, but when I came back to the computer to look at the results, it had finished and then booted up. I am going to do it again tonight and keep an eye out for any results.
Is there a way to determine if the USB ports are all ok? I have 2 working as I am using them for the backup and the keyboard. I just don't remember which one had the printer cable in it and I don't know if I should be wary of it or not.
Provided there is no physical damage I'm sure the USB ports are fine. Dell machines have circuits to detect overload and shut down the power supply in the event of a short circuit. Also, you most likely have no actual hard drive problem at this time; if the computer had encountered an error the computer would not have re-booted.
Since you did get the one failure, however, it's a good thing to keep back-ups current and keep an eye on the behavior of the machine. As I stated earlier, the 07 error can be an early indication of hard drive failure, so stay alert!
bunsnpigs
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October 7th, 2009 08:00
Thank you for replying, Jack. I did determine that the cause was 'other failure' because the first 3 lights were green and the last was yellow. However, after I reset the CMOS jumper pins, all lights are green.
I can't find my Windows CD for the life of me. I have to look harder because it would be nice if I could at least try that. So you are saying that my power supply is probably ok? I don't even know how to tell if it is or not.
Judi
jackshack
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October 7th, 2009 08:00
Have you determined the status of the diagnostic LEDs? See the Advanced Troubleshooting portion of your manual to see if the LED's or power light give any hints as to the problem.
One thing you could try is to boot from your Windows Installation CD; if you can boot from the CD you have at least narrowed the problem from being a system-wide failure.
Usually the most catastrophic effect from a USB problem is a short on the power lines, but these are current limited and usually shut down the power supply. You might simply have a hard drive problem coincidental to the USB problem.
rdunnill
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October 7th, 2009 09:00
Once, when pressing in a USB plug I bent one of the pins in the socket so that it shorted out, and a chip on the Foxconn mainboard overheated with a red glow and began to smoke!
However, I've noticed that Dells tend to be more resilient and that resetting the CMOS is usually enough to restore the mainboard to working condition.
bunsnpigs
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October 7th, 2009 10:00
Well, THAT sounds like fun. I'm glad to say that I did not see any smoke nor did I hear a pop, but so far resetting the CMOS hasn't worked for me. In the absence of finding the Windows CD, do you think removing the battery might help?
Thanks again.
Judi
jackshack
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October 7th, 2009 12:00
Removing the battery will set the CMOS back to its defaults, so it can't hurt, but I thought you said you had tried that already.
You stated in your original post that you could use F12 to reach the one time boot menu; can you also press F2 and navigate the system setup menu? If you can do that, and almost boot up (reaching a blue screen means that Windows has begun to load), there should be nothing wrong with your power supply. Except that you have had a hardware fault I would lean more toward a corrupted Windows loader for your troubles. You really need to try an alternate boot device, such as the Windows installation CD in your optical drive. If the CD boots I would say that the computer is having trouble reading data from the hard drive. This can result either from corrupted files on the drive, or a failing drive.
bunsnpigs
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October 7th, 2009 14:00
Thanks again. All I did was reset the jumper pins. I did not remove the battery. I will search valiantly for the Windows CD - I know I have it somewhere... As I do not have internet access at home, I will report on my efforts tomorrow.
bunsnpigs
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October 7th, 2009 19:00
I am online from home and I don't know how I did it.
I found the Windows installation CD. It wasn't such a good thing because it wouldn't let me run the repair option and the only other option was to do a new installation. I had no idea how the NTFS file system is selected and didn't want to screw stuff up, so I rebooted into the boot options and ran the last known good configuration. I don't know how old it is. How do I find that info?
Anyway, I rebooted to run a check of the disk configuration and that must have gone ok because it proceeded to boot up. I then ran an error check on the C: drive and got a fail with a return code of 7.
I just completed a backup of my C: drive documents. whew.
Is there something else I should do?
Thank you again!
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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October 7th, 2009 21:00
The important part is that the computer booted ok from the CD. The computer itself is therefore ok, and if there is a problem, it is associated with the hard drive. Backing up your data was a very good thing to do.
The last known good configuration is the registry from the last time the computer booted without any problems. It should be ok to run from that. The return code you received often indicates a hardware failure, but since you had no trouble until the hardware error, it might also be from corrupted data on the drive. If you go back to the diagnostic using F12 during the self test after startup you should be able to run a detailed test of the hard drive. It's been a while since I performed one of these, but I believe you might need to run the quick test first. After that you can get to a menu that allows you to choose specific tests. Choose the test for the hard drive and allow it to run to completion; it can take a while so be patient.
If the hard drive produces no further errors you can probably re-install to get a clean installation again. Unfortunately you likely can't do the repair installation because the version of Windows on your hard drive has a later service pack than does your installation disk. If you wish you can Google nLite and learn how to slipstream a service pack into a Windows installation CD that you make using your existing installation CD and the Service Pack 3 update. If you succeed in doing this you will likely be able to use the new CD to perform a repair.
If the diagnostic does find additional errors you have a hard drive that is close to failure and you will need to replace it.
bunsnpigs
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October 8th, 2009 05:00
I am now running directly from the hard drive. I did run that test of the hard drive, but when I came back to the computer to look at the results, it had finished and then booted up. I am going to do it again tonight and keep an eye out for any results.
Is there a way to determine if the USB ports are all ok? I have 2 working as I am using them for the backup and the keyboard. I just don't remember which one had the printer cable in it and I don't know if I should be wary of it or not.
I really appreciate your time and help!
Judi
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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October 8th, 2009 09:00
Provided there is no physical damage I'm sure the USB ports are fine. Dell machines have circuits to detect overload and shut down the power supply in the event of a short circuit. Also, you most likely have no actual hard drive problem at this time; if the computer had encountered an error the computer would not have re-booted.
Since you did get the one failure, however, it's a good thing to keep back-ups current and keep an eye on the behavior of the machine. As I stated earlier, the 07 error can be an early indication of hard drive failure, so stay alert!
You are very welcome. Best of luck to you!