BIOS start up issues?

Question

After my Dell Flash Screen appears and before I see the Windows XP flash screen, my Dimension 4600, with BIOS A02, displays a blank screen (black) with a cursor flashing in the upper left hand corner for about 7½ minutes before initiating Windows XP. Once Windows XP (w/SP3) starts up, the PC runs well. I've had this problem for a while and last week reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP from my Dell Reinstallation Disk (from 2003) with all the subsequent online updates. This took quite some time, but I was happy with the results. My system started up very fast and I thought my problems were resolved, until this morning. Only 5 days after my reformatting, I'm back to the same 7½ minute delay before the system starts up. Do I have a BIOS problem, a motherboard problem or a hard drive problem?  I can't believe it's a software issue as nothing outside of the BIOS has started before this delay kicks in.  Does anyone have any ideas?

MRF4700 · Answer

You have a much older BIOS version #. Try updating to the current revision and see if the problem goes away?

Locked Topics – Desktops General

Was this post helpful?