W2K Pro freezing when booting Latitude X200

Question

We have received a couple of this Latitude X200 and had to put the enterprise version of Windows 2000 pro from our Microsoft select agreement. We are using RIS to create images for these machines. I have installed all the drivers from the Dell web site and have not been able to get it to stop freezing. It will work if you boot the machine several times and 2 out 10 will boot correctly. Once it boots correctly once it will boot fine until you change the power to battery or add or remove the network or fire wire CD ROM. Thank you for your help

rootjedi · Answer

I am having a similar problem with one of 2 X200's recently purchased by my company. We don't use XP in our office. We routinely remove XP and load Windows 2000 Professional onto our Dell PCs and Laptops.

The X200 in questions differs from the one working in that in it's media base it dosen't have a CDROM installed, we use the external IEEE1394 fire-wire CD-RW drive. When the user attempts to take his laptop on the road and boot it up on battery power without the external CD-RW drive connected, it stalls during the bootup process during the "Loading Windows 2000" screen with the progress bar at the bottom. The progress bar gets about 2/3 done and stops. This is a serious problem as the reason we purchased the Latitude X200 was because it was light and didn't have an internal CDROM or require an external one to operate and our user needs it that way. He now has to attempt to plug in the external fire-wire CD-RW when he is working on the plane..etc.

Please respond ASAP. We may be forced to return it as it is not fulfilling the purpose for which it was purchased. Thank you.

chris_4711 · Answer

Hi! We're having the same problems, as you both described before! Did you found any solution solving the freezing during the boot of W2K ? chris

Dutch lowlander · Answer

Hi all. Also having the same problem! Anyone any suggestions?? Michael

dmaselli · Answer

We are also using the same model for all of our regional managers (about 50 total). We seem to experience the freeze-up during the W2K splash screen progress bar (3/4 completed), mostly after undocking from media bay on every model. I will try to upgrade the BIOS today and let you know the outcome.

I noticed this thread is almost a year old and no moderators have responded to the initial post. Is this a known issue that is being worked on? There have been many BIOS revisions released for this model over the last year which makes me very concerned.

Daniel

jmpottery · Answer

I had the exact same problem with my X200 & win2000 pro.  I found my computer would not freeze when booting if I had my wireless PCMCIA card plugged in.  Either that card or the cd-rom plugged in would get it past the freezing screen on startup.   Over the past couple years I've re-installed many times, with no effect, BUT recently I re-installed and used the A10 version of the video drivers and the problem has gone away.  Might be worth a try for others.  The A11 version of the video drivers causes the screen to go blank at exactly the same point in startup, without any appreciable affect on the freezing.

Windows General

W2K Pro freezing when booting Latitude X200

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