Dell Dimension 4100

  • Thread starter Thread starter finnen
  • Start date Start date
F

finnen

I have started having a problem when booting the machine. Rather than
booting up, I get a screen that displays some hardwre information
followed <del> to resume.

The lights on the back of the tower indicate a PCI bus failure i.e
light B is green, the others yellow.

I have tried reseating the sound card, video card,etc and the two
memory cards. However, none of this has helped cure the problem.

What can I do next?

Thanks in advance for any help.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
finnen said:
I have started having a problem when booting the machine. Rather than
booting up, I get a screen that displays some hardwre information
followed <del> to resume.

The lights on the back of the tower indicate a PCI bus failure i.e
light B is green, the others yellow.

I have tried reseating the sound card, video card,etc and the two
memory cards. However, none of this has helped cure the problem.

What can I do next?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you might have lost your cmos settings. This is quite
common. There is a battery on most motherboards (small silver disk/button
type, usually) that saves the cmos settings. When the battery dies, the
computer won't boot, and will come up with an error message saying hit <del>
or <f1> or whatever to continue. If the problem is a dead cmos battery, the
battery is usually easy to replace. Just take the current one out, go to
radio shack, plop a few bucks down on a new one and throw it in.
Unfortunately, if the cmos settings were lost due to a dead battery, then
simply replacing the battery might not solve your problem. After you
replace the battery, hit delete or f1 or whatever key you have to hit to
enter the bios setup screen while the computer is booting. Scroll through
the bios setup menu to load DEFAULT settings. That will hopefully allow the
system to at least boot the OS again. If the default settings won't allow
the system to boot, you might have to have someone look at the system to see
what cmos settings might need to be changed to allow the system to boot
again. In some cases, you might have to change a jumper on the motherboard
to CLEAR the CMOS, also. If that's necessary, you might have to pull out
the manual for your motherboard to find out which jumper to change. -Dave
 
Your motherboard has failed and needs to be replaced.

--
DaveW



finnen said:
I have started having a problem when booting the machine. Rather than
booting up, I get a screen that displays some hardwre information
followed <del> to resume.

The lights on the back of the tower indicate a PCI bus failure i.e
light B is green, the others yellow.

I have tried reseating the sound card, video card,etc and the two
memory cards. However, none of this has helped cure the problem.

What can I do next?

Thanks in advance for any help.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware
Click to expand...
troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
finnen said:
I have started having a problem when booting the machine. Rather than
booting up, I get a screen that displays some hardwre information
followed <del> to resume.

The lights on the back of the tower indicate a PCI bus failure i.e
light B is green, the others yellow.

I have tried reseating the sound card, video card,etc and the two
memory cards. However, none of this has helped cure the problem.

What can I do next?
Click to expand...

On a bus the failure of any card can hang the bus and cause it to appear
defective so remove all PCI cards and see if it boots without error that
way. If it does then you replace them, one at a time, to see which one
causes the failure to return.

If it fails with no PCI cards installed then the failure may be on the
motherboard itself.
 
Back
Top