Dell Dimension 9100 bootup problem

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I just got my old Dell Dimension 9100 back from my sister. Everything worked when she had it. After I first started playing with it, it would restart after 15 or 20 minutes or if I tried to open a certain program. I did not try that hard to figure out the problem. I was thinking heat because HWmonitor showed the hard drives temps close to 50 degrees.

Now here is where the real problem starts. I have a q6600 out of my last build that I suspect to be bad. So I decided to try it out in the Dell since it has the same socket. Well that may have been a mistake. After I installed it, I could not get the machine to come on at all. It would not do anything. So I put the original processor(pentium D) back in and still nothing. I thought maybe something happened to the PSU so I started checking voltages and I was still getting 12 volts from a 4 pin molex connector. It turns out it was the 3 pin clear cmos on the motherboard. The jumper was on the wrong two pins.

After I switched the clear cmos jumper, it would come on but I get the floppy diskette seek failure message and it will not go past the Windows loading screen and just restart. Most of the time, it will restart before it gets to the Windows loading screen. Now the thing is this Dell has never had a floppy drive installed.

I have tried different sticks of memory in different slots, tried unplugging the dvd drives, tried unplugging one of the hard drives. I still thought it may have been heat related but I don't think so anymore. I let it sit over night and it still did the same thing.
 
Your bios setting are at default now. Most likely you need to go into the bios and change some settings. One setting to look at, would be the ahci/raid/ide option for the sata controller. I'm guessing it should be in Ahci mode, if not try each option for the sata controller since not sure how your system is setup, one of them should make your system bootup properly though.
 
The ACHI setting has never been changed. So that shouldn't have changed when everything went back to default. I will still try different settings to rule that out. IIRC, it is in ACHI mode.

Ever since I tried to install the q6600, it does not want to boot up. Is it possible that I may have damaged the mobo?

EDIT: I don't believe this but changing the sata controller fixed it. I didn't think I ever changed that and I know my sister didn't change that. It was set on Raid autodetect/ACHI(default setting) and I changed it to Raid autodetect/ata and it boots up now. But now I can't login without activating Windows. Why do I have to activate Windows again? Is it because of the setting that I changed? Since I have no internet on that machine, I have to call them. Stupid Windows.

Will a q6600 even work in this machine? Even though it is the same socket doesn't mean it will work. If someone knows for a fact that it will not work, then I will not try it again and take a chance of messing something up.
 
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You must not have it set to the correct setting as its detecting new hardware and windows wants to get reactivated... As far as it supporting the qaud core processor, it's hit or miss but I don't think it will. Probably have to put the old processor back in.
 
Right now I have the original processor installed. Is there any way I can find out for sure it the q6600 will work? I might try to contact Dell.
 
I could not get an answer out of Dell without having to pay for it since the computer is out of warranty, what a bunch of crap. Why can't anything be simple:mad: Stupid Dell.
 
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