bios sees drives but can't boot

I'd love any help you may have on this weird one. I'm out of ideas. I have an old Dell Dimension 8300. It won't boot. Bios is fine and it sees all drives. I suspect corrupted windows files (XP Pro) for the halt after POST. Tried to boot from CD with XP disx and system halts after POST. Won't boot from the CD. Reseated Memory just in case and system halts after post. Can still push F8 to get to safe mode so it must be starting Windows somehow, right?? System starts to work but halts at isa???(something). Replaced video card thinking isa was used before pci became popular. Nothing. Back to bios and all drives are listed as unknown. Eeek! Moved the CMOS jumper and restarted, etc. Drives are found but still won't boot from HD or CD. Tried using new CD drive and IDE cable. Drive found but won't boot. Removed hard drive from boot order so only cd was listed. System reports that it can't boot. It gives me the option of F1 to try reboot or F2 to go into setup. Still no boot.

I'd like to flash the bios, but I have no idea how to get a new version into this pig.


I'm pretty frustrated and completely out of ideas. Anything you can think of would be really awesome.

Thanks in advance.

K

 

First thought is bad/dead CMOS battery; second thought is failing motherboard. Make a complete inspection of your motherboard capacitors. Here's some examples:

Normal healthy capacitors look like this:

http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:l-O3uyAZWlRbFM:http://www.hardware-one.com/reviews/msi6309/images/capacitor.jpg http://www.fotosearch.com/bthumb/GLW/GLW137/gwc118050.jpg

Leaking/popped capacitors look like this:

http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:Y5WuxQTQI_nreM:http://www.op911.net/photos/story/capacitor.jpg http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:n6qnVlzrMn1XaM:http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2162895/BadCapacitor01-main_Full.jpg



Sometimes bad capacitors won't actually have the crud leaking out the top as in some of the pics above, but if the top of the capacitor is not PERFECTLY flat, then it is failing. Even a very, very slight 'popped' top is bad news. Make a thorough visual inspection of the capacitors.
I have seen many motherboards with numerous capacitors that are very slightly popped, and the board still boots up and runs fine. However, because the capacitors are not performing 100% as they should, there is a very real chance that damage is being done to other components from incorrect and
"dirty" current and voltage flowing through the system.

 

Thanks. I didn't think of the battery. I'll give it a try when I check out the capacitors.

 

Hmmm... Still stumped. The capacitors look fine and the battery has a charge. It keeps the settings when the computer is unplugged for a while. Something uncommon seems to be going on. I'm going to try to boot the Dell's hard drive from my other computer.

 

Windows was corrupted on the drive. Used disk to repair with Window install disk. Still won't boot on Dell. Problem seems to be on the board or connections, I think. I just don't know what to fix to get it going. I'd hate to need to replace the board. Any ideas?

K