Contact Dell Technical Support, and describe exactly the problem and the symptoms you are seeing. It's reasonably likely that you need a new processor.

David,

Thank you the advise. However Dell is very difficult to contact by phone. So, are you refering to the actual CPU? If so, does that come out of a ZIF socket like the older PCs? Or is there more to it than that?

I'm assuming you're using a Dimension XPS T series computer. You can see how to remove the processor here (it's not a ZIF socket, but rather a slot, similar to an Atari cartridge).

Certainly, to receive a warranty replacement, you will need to contact Dell Technical Support as stated in your warranty. If the phones are busy during the part of the day that you can contact them, try sending an e-mail to support@dell.com, or use Dell's e-mail Communication Center.

Hi David,

Thank you for the info. Yes mine is a XPS T series. If I can endure the long wait and get a Dell Technical Rep by phone, would he be able to send out a replacement CPU for me to install. I think I can replace the CPU in a fraction of the time that waiting on the phone will take, but if you think this will correct my problem, it is worth it.

I would like to know, what is in the CPU that could possibly be causing this problem. And are you pretty sure that the ROM BIOS is not responsible for this problem?

They can send out the replacement CPU, but if you have an in-home service contract, I'd recommend using it instead.

The symptoms you describe mirror an issue we're currently tracking. Initial CPU replacements have typically corrected the problem. I don't have more information than that currently, unfortunately.

Same exact situation with my new Dell XPS B733r.
What seemed to work is to go in to Display Settings, Advanced, and in the Monitor Tab un-check "Automatically Detect Plug and Play Monitors" and also un-check "Reset Display on Resume." [I'm not sure which uncheck acturally fixed the problem]. No matter, the unit does wake up on mouse movement from "standby."
Bill

BillPike,

Thanks for the advice. You mentioned that yours now wakes from a mouse movement. That is not the same as my problem. Mine always wakes from a mouse movement. My porblem is only at the initial boot. The PC just won't boot if the monitor is in the sleep mode.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the reply. And it sounds like you have experienced the same thing as I. I did make the two changes in the Control Panal's Display settings, but the problem did not go away. I currently set the Flash Bios to 'start on power loss' (or something like that). So when I turn on my power switch, both the monitor and PC start up together. This seems to be the only way that most of the PC boots on the first try. But if I shut down (through the START button) as normal, thus leaving the power applied to the back of the PC and the monitor goes to standby (yellow), then when I press the power button on the PC, the bug is there. Guess you are right, the PC does not always reconize the monitor when it is in stanby. I also noticed by changing settings in the flash BIOS for 'show diagnostic' and disable the short boot I get slightly better results. However, the bottom like is: we are just masking some real problem. The PC should boot with a power managed monitor no mater how we set these other settings. My other PC is a HP Vectra VL, and it will boot anyway no matter how you mess with the settings. So I am convinced that we have less than perfect Dell hardware. By the way I have the same monitor as you, but I have tried several other monitors with the same results except when I put an old monitor (Packard Bell) with NO power management. Then the PC booted every time with no problem at all.

Patrick
I only mentioned the wake up from standby works, because I unchecked the box that I presumed would relate to such.
I did, however, have the same problem you had on initial hard boot. Sometimes it would boot OK, sometimes not. My guess is that If I pressed the computer "on" button after immediately applying power to the monitor - it would work. But, if I didn't turn the computer on right away after aplying power to the monitor, and after so many seconds, the monitor went in to a mode indicating that it was on standby (little white window on screen, and yellow indicator light) then somehow that casued the computer not to recognize that a monitor was available. Un-checking the search for plug and play monitor I think cleared this up.
I have, by the way, a Dell 19" Tinitron P991.
Bill

Patrick,
Thanks for sharing you experiences. I'll keep a watch on my machine al ittle better because of your cautions and advice.
Bill

Patrick;

I have a similar problem. My system would not cold boot from the hard drive. If I put a startup diskette in and hit the power button it would start diagnostics. I would then pop the diskette and it would boot from the hard drive.
Dell support asked me to remove ATA66 card. I did, no help. then they wanted me to remove modem, sound card, reset memory, reset CPU. No help.
Side issue ( when I have an in home service contract, why am I trying to isolate the problem instead of them?)
Anyway I removed the DVD, and the ZIP drive. So now I have CPU, 256K bytes of ram, Video card, hard drive and floopy. It still wouldn't boot from the hard drive without doing the trick with the floopy.
I decided it wouldn't do any harm to put everything back. When I did it would boot from the hard drive every other time.
BTW - it will warm boot every time.
Dell support said it was the CPU, it's not clear to me why. I'm also not sure if it's the CPU or motherboard, but something is not being initialize correctly.
Side issue - the CPU is not a single chip anymore, its a module with additional circuitry on it.

Well Dell was suppose to come to the house last week to replace the CPU (I hope they bring a motherboard too.) but I havn't heard from them. I'll let you know what happens.

P.S. It's easier to contact them by e-mail. No waiting, send e-mail - check once a day for a reply. No waiting on the phone for 4 hrs.

old_man

I think the problem has to do with the system rcognizing the monitor. Try loading or re-installing the monitor driver. When I first got my new system the problem occurred and then I resoved it - I thought, because I disabled under display settings, monitor "auto detect plug and play monitors."
The problem went away, but then last week I installed new NVidia Drivers (the beta 5.13) and the boot problem started all over again. This time, unchecking "auto detect plug and play didn't work. But, I downloaded updated Dell Monitor Drivers, and installed them. The problem went away. I'm not sure why.
I have an XPSB733r
Trinitron / Dell991 Monitor
NVidia 32M AGP GeForce
billpike

Wow! Sounds like your system is worse than mine. Yours sounds like the problem Intel has discribed to me. Hope Dell comes out and takes care of it for you.

I have the same monitor as you. Where did you find the updated drivers for the P991 monitor?

Patrick,
On Dell's Web / Service site. I think under video. The downloaded file seems to include drivers for quite a few monitors. The driver that I installed actually was an older file date that the one I was using. But I think the key to this probelm is to reload the monitor driver(s) after messing with the video drivers. My opinion is that this problem is NOT hardware related but rather software related including Windows, monitor, and video drivers working or not working together.
Bill