Help: Windows doesn't boot one minute, boots fine the next.

: Hey All,

I'm trying to troubleshoot a Dell Dimension 3000 running XP home SP2 for a friend of mine. I get to his house, hit the power button, and this is what it does:

1) Dell Splash screen pops up
2) Followed by blank screen with flashing cursor in top left corner and nothing else.

So I CTRL+ALT+DEL and I get two options during Dell splash screen: F2 for BIOS or F12 for boot menu. Neither work, and I found it odd that I couldn't even go to BIOS.

So I took the computer to my home for further testing. Hit the power button, and XP Home boots up like normal. I don't even get a dos screen asking which windows profile to run.

I've restarted and powered down several times without incident and I'm pretty much swimming for ideas. My next step is to run a memory test. I'm still open to this being a software related issue.

I thank you all kindly for reading my post, and appreciate any related feedback or ideas to try here.

So at your friend's house the system presented the problem you stated, but then at your house the system booted up correctly? Strange.

During the boot-up, did the system beep to indicate the POST completion? If not, then it could possibly mean a bad hardware is interfering/conflicting with the boot-up, so then test the hardware components (swapping memory, unplugging unused devices, etc until the source is determined)

If a beep does occur, run a good system scan, because it may be software related.

If you can't access the BIOS, could just be a glitch, try resetting the BIOS then try again.

K

Usually, no software related issue should prevent you from getting into BIOS. As far as I know, Hardware problems or some times static electricty can do things like that.

Still, it's always weired when such things as "one time works and one time doesn't" happens.

Did you use your friends power cord or our own when you tested it at home? What you described was a problem that I had about 3 years ago. I took apart a computer and tested everything, then I changed the power cord and everything worked well. I opened the cord up and there it was, a short. Always check your connections first. I didn't and spent 2 days learning a hard lesson.
Anyways, maybe that will help or give you some ideas.
Speck

Plug in speakers or earphones into your motherboard sound card and the computer voice will tell you the problem. If there is no problem the voice will tell you that the operating system is now booting up.


Cheers,

ZiPPy

Seen a very similar thing to what you may be experiencing (which was news to me when i was told).

Anyhow, it was with a HP Pavilion tower. Basically, my mate had a load of USB devices plugged in and for some reason it seemed to suck too much power. If he switched off his USB Printer before booting the machine, it would boot without any issues.

My advise is to take it back to your mates house and try it without any USB devices plugged in and see if it does make a difference, i would also see if there is a BIOS update and if so apply the BIOS Update.

Cheers