Dell 450/Win98/ No start

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Our Dell XPST450 / Win 98 1st edition suddenly wouldn't start .... after
pushing the power on button the cd lights flickered like it was gonna , the
monitor LED went from amber to green then back sleep ( amber) ,the fan ran.
but nothing at all on the monitor - blank. The keyboard lights did not
flicker like they do normally . They stayed dark. I put the Win 98 startup
disk in and viola! , It started up. I chose item 3 in the menu, ( view the
read me file ) just to see what was up. I exited out of the readme and
exited the boot disk just to see what it would do then, I restarted with out
the boot disk and all is fine now.

Anybody wanna give an opinion on what that was?
 
Unavailable said:
Our Dell XPST450 / Win 98 1st edition suddenly wouldn't start .... after
pushing the power on button the cd lights flickered like it was gonna , the
monitor LED went from amber to green then back sleep ( amber) ,the fan ran.
but nothing at all on the monitor - blank. The keyboard lights did not
flicker like they do normally . They stayed dark. I put the Win 98 startup
disk in and viola! , It started up. I chose item 3 in the menu, ( view the
read me file ) just to see what was up. I exited out of the readme and
exited the boot disk just to see what it would do then, I restarted with out
the boot disk and all is fine now.

Anybody wanna give an opinion on what that was?
Click to expand...

If no beep from POST, the power supply may be borderline. Booting from a
startup disk is a bit of a mystery, but the power supply is still a
possibility. Loose cable inside is also a minor possibility.

If you can, try getting to the BIOS and disable the fast startup and
eliminate the pretty DELL splash screen so you can see what is going on.
(Boot options in the BIOS is where you find these two, if I recollect
correctly.)
 
Unavailable said:
Our Dell XPST450 / Win 98 1st edition suddenly wouldn't start .... after
pushing the power on button the cd lights flickered like it was gonna , the
monitor LED went from amber to green then back sleep ( amber) ,the fan ran.
but nothing at all on the monitor - blank. The keyboard lights did not
flicker like they do normally . They stayed dark. I put the Win 98 startup
disk in and viola! , It started up. I chose item 3 in the menu, ( view the
read me file ) just to see what was up. I exited out of the readme and
exited the boot disk just to see what it would do then, I restarted with out
the boot disk and all is fine now.

Anybody wanna give an opinion on what that was?
Click to expand...

Machine might just be showing it's age and requires a second or two warmup
before a good boot would occur.

On older machines 386's, etc. I would normally just solder a large capacitor
across the reset button so the PC would stay reset for the first second or
so it was turned on, then it would boot normally.
 
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