Bios issues?

A

Alero2k4

New Member
I have a near 2 year old Dell Dimension e510 Desktop. I am unsure on the actual mother board that I have, but have recently been having issues I think may be linked to the BIOS. I have no clue what steps to really take from here, but here is a description of symptoms. Intermittent issues with it restarting from standby mode. Sometimes it will just sit on a black screen and not restart back to the windows log in screen (I have windows XP media center edition). If this occurs, I must power down and then come back on and will normally end up with a 'blue screen of death' stating something to the effect of if I have installed new hardware to remove it.

This issue has happened about 4 times over the past week and a half, but it is very annoying. The 1st time I had to use the disk with my OS on it in order to reboot. This most recent time it would start through the bios loading screen and freeze at the very end. I rebooted a couple times with the same result. I then removed my CMOS battery and it froze, but then continued on to eventually the blue screen of death. Another reboot and I was able to get the option to reboot in safe mode with networking. I am unsure whether or not this is hardware or software related and really just need some help. I have a general understanding of computer parts, how they work, etc., but this is above my head.

As far as I am aware, I have no viruses. I surf in Firefox2, I have trendmicro PC-cillin (came w/ comp), Ewido, ATF cleaner, and Solo antivirus active at the moment. I apologize if this is in the wrong forum and appreciate any available help/advice.

Sincerely, Rob
 
Rob, I'm not going to be much help to ya, so sorry in advance for wasting your time, but I don't think its a BIOS problem. Persoanlly, I've never heard of a computer that works right comming out of standby/sleep/hibernation. I think you've just joined the crowd. However, have you installed anything new latley? You mentioned that you have Media Center....why did you state that?
 
asdfguy said:
Rob, I'm not going to be much help to ya, so sorry in advance for wasting your time, but I don't think its a BIOS problem. Persoanlly, I've never heard of a computer that works right comming out of standby/sleep/hibernation. I think you've just joined the crowd. However, have you installed anything new latley? You mentioned that you have Media Center....why did you state that?
Click to expand...


Just so people knew what I was working with, didn't know if it mattered whether it was just xp pro or xp pro w/ media center is all.

I reinstalled the OS last night and so far, no boot issues. Now to just get all my drivers reinstalled and deal with that crap, I think there were some corrupted files/possibly a virus. I have been up and running for over a year, so I was probably due to wipe out the HDD anyways.
 
K, I need some serious help here guys. Please move this to a new forum if needed, but I am having even more issues.

So, I reinstalled the OS and started all over (wiped it clean). I have note had issues with it being in sleep mode for the past year and a half so I need help determining whether or not it is bad hardware. I can boot through POST and BIOS, but then it is now not finding my HDD at all. It sees my 2 opticals, but not my HDD. I tried pulling one stick of ram and swapping them back and forth to see if one of those failed or not, and it made no difference. I also pulled the CMOS battery and let it completely reset to no avail. I double checked the connections and everything is still installed properly. I am now thinking it has to be motherboard or hard drive, with the remote possibility of power supply. How to I go about determining what is the problem?

Full system specs:
Seagate Barracuda 7400 rpm 250G HDD
ATI Radion x600 graphics
2G DDR PC4200 Kingston RAM
Bios A05
P4 3.2G 630 w HT (Prescott)
Don't know motherboard but if anyone knows what Dell would have used that is cool too. (Manufactured last year in May)

I would just try to swap the HDD into another computer.....but I don't have one, I am typing from my wife's laptop right now. ANY help is greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks

Edit: I have also hit f2 to enter setup and it keeps changing my stupid settings around, turning the stuff on/off. I am not sure if this is due to automatic detection or what, but it is rather annoying to say the least, I also did make sure to turn on the drives where my harddrive should be and it still does not find it.
 
Last edited:
Alero2k4 said:
Edit: I have also hit f2 to enter setup and it keeps changing my stupid settings around, turning the stuff on/off. I am not sure if this is due to automatic detection or what, but it is rather annoying to say the least, I also did make sure to turn on the drives where my harddrive should be and it still does not find it.
Click to expand...

Have you tried replacing the boards battery with a new one?
 
Well guys, turns out my HDD went bad, so time to go upgrade to a 500G and get this one repaired to use as a slave. Never really heard of them going bad like that, and it was a Seagate so I dunno, but gonna get a western digital just to be safe anyways. :D
 
Had to take it in to firedog to have it tested. (If you were referring to how I found out it was the Harddrive)
 
Well, good luck with that, I'd be interested to hear if that solves your hibernation problem as well.
 
I sure hope so, I had no problems with it in over a year before that, in a month or two I will update this and let ya know.
 
Yep, hard drives could do that, but your BIOS issue isn't actually fake. Some motherboards have problems resuming from S3 Suspend. Dells though, shouldn't.
 
Just an update. I replaced the HDD with a western digital 7200rpm 250gig. I have thus far had 0 issues with coming out of sleep mode although I now usually fully shut down. Shutting down is no longer an issue as I can go through a full boot from bios to fully loaded desktop in under a minute. (I would estimate close to 45 seconds) I love this western digital since it is much much quieter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top