Help!

Hi,

I am having an issue with my dell dimension 4550, whenever i try and start in it gets stuck in boot. I tried going to setup and it cant read the hard drives and it wont start from a cd. I have already examined the motherboard and nothing appears wrong with it. Any suggestions on what to do would be greatly appreciated.


KasenWill

 

Greetings, KasenWill.

A few quickies, if you haven't already (after each, see if your symptoms change):

!. Power down and unplug the machine for a few minutes, then restart.

2. Power down and unplug, pull your CMOS battery for a few minutes, then restart.

3. Power down and unplug, check all connections, reseat your RAM, swap RAM modules, etc.

Do you have access to parts or another machine that you can use for troubleshooting?

 

Also, will the machine start in Safe Mode? And, what OS/service pack # are you running?

 

Thanks for the help Caliban!
I have attempted to start it in safe mode but it wouldnt let me it would just beep. And i have tried everything but the ram. And i am running windows XP SP2. Also i do have some spare parts but not to much...

 

Ok, try the RAM - take care of static issues, but you've got to verify that the memory's not causing the problem.

 

Thanks for the help Caliban but i just saw a part of the motherboard that seemed popped... :banghead So that seems to be the cause of the problem... Just have to buy a new motherboard... Any suggestions on any good motherboards???

 

Ah - the old 'part of the motherboard that seemed popped' trick!

Replacing the motherboard in an OEM machine may be problematic, because of proprietary hardware, connectors, etc. If it's not an exact replacement, you may also run into Windows licensing issues.

That being said: what are your processor, memory, hard drive, and peripheral specs?

 

my processor speed is about 1.9 ghz and i have about an 80 gb hard drive and around 2gb of ram.