Greetings. I am working on a Dell system that lost the operating system for some reason. At first I thought it was cause the kids virused the machine again, but not this time.
XP installation fails all the time, after the system reboots and starts the install from the hdd. Blue screen of death, or just freezes. I tried changing ram - no luck. So I battled with this system for hours trying to find out whats going on, then I went to bed and the answer came to me - it's overheating. Symptoms got worse over time, failed earlier and earlier in the process. So next morning I started checking out the cooling system. It appeared to be working - but this system is designed poorly - it does not have a CPU cooling fan - it has one fan in front of the CPU taking in cool air from the front of the machine. Then it has two exhast fans on the back with a large plastic thing that aims the air flow out the back. What I discovered is that both exhast fans were working, but not well. When I placed my fingers on them, they both stopped, which means that they were only working at about 15% of their potential. The system has been cooking for a while and now it's failing,
I changed the ram hoping that the heating blew the ram, but putting new ram in does not help. I replaced both fans - it's cooling now - but install still fails when you get to XP starting from the hdd. The rest of the install process goes fine - formatting etc.....
My guess is that the system board is fried. That the cache is gone and is writing bad data during the install.
I have tried a different hdd. New ram. I do not have another system board.
Anything else I may try???
Any help appreciated.
XP installation fails all the time, after the system reboots and starts the install from the hdd. Blue screen of death, or just freezes. I tried changing ram - no luck. So I battled with this system for hours trying to find out whats going on, then I went to bed and the answer came to me - it's overheating. Symptoms got worse over time, failed earlier and earlier in the process. So next morning I started checking out the cooling system. It appeared to be working - but this system is designed poorly - it does not have a CPU cooling fan - it has one fan in front of the CPU taking in cool air from the front of the machine. Then it has two exhast fans on the back with a large plastic thing that aims the air flow out the back. What I discovered is that both exhast fans were working, but not well. When I placed my fingers on them, they both stopped, which means that they were only working at about 15% of their potential. The system has been cooking for a while and now it's failing,
I changed the ram hoping that the heating blew the ram, but putting new ram in does not help. I replaced both fans - it's cooling now - but install still fails when you get to XP starting from the hdd. The rest of the install process goes fine - formatting etc.....
My guess is that the system board is fried. That the cache is gone and is writing bad data during the install.
I have tried a different hdd. New ram. I do not have another system board.
Anything else I may try???
Any help appreciated.
