I purchased a Dell XPS 420 PC about 2 years ago and its been the worst product I have ever purchased. Shortly after I setup the computer from new, I was experiencing problems with it randomly freezing. I have a little computer knowledge so I tried to diagnose. What happens first is an application such as Internet Explorer will freeze and stop responding. At this point the computer will still allow you to minimise and sometimes tab into a different application already open. Within a few seconds of doing this, that application will also freeze. Within about 30 seconds, the whole system has frozen. Obviously at this point a hard reboot is required. Nine times out of ten, the system doesn't boot into windows, it hangs shortly after loading the BIOS. It doesn't matter how many times you turn the machine off and on again, even waiting for a day or so, it hangs around the same place during boot. This is where it gets VERY strange. The only way I can get the system to reboot back into windows is by running the Dell Pre-Boot System Assessment software. To my knowledge this doesn't actually change or fix anything on the system. The software runs several checks on the hardware and comes back with everything being OK. When the system reboots it loads windows just fine and the system is working again. If this software only checks hardware, why does running it fix the problem? I spoke to someone from Dell technical support, based in India, who was completely useless. He was basically expecting me to diagnose the fault myself. He asked me to run the Pre-Boot diagnostic software and look out for any faults which it lists. I did this several times but everything is OK. He then assumed I had previous computer knowledge and asked me to re-seat the RAM, which I did. This didn't fix the problem. I was then asked to remove all but 1 RAM stick and run the software again, then repeat with all the other sticks. All the memory sticks were fine. I already had removed and checked all the cables and re-seated the Graphics card. I was even told at one point this was a Operating System issue and that I should re-install windows. This was BS because I have used several operating system on this machine and all have the same issue. I tried Windows Vista, Windows 7, Centos Linux, Ubuntu Linux. The problem has been on and off for the last 2 years since buying the machine. Even though this was a reported issue from week 1 which went unresolved thanks to Dell's wonderful technical support, the machine is now out of warranty and they refuse to help. Thats good customer service for you! If you can think of anything that I haven't tried, please let me know. P.S Anyone wanna buy a Dell PC, I know one going cheap?
Welcome to HWF The most likely cause for your symptoms is a bad Power Supply Unit, which causes a system to completely freeze. The problem with Dell computers is their non-standard form factor. A 'regular' Power Supply won't work in a Dell machine, unfortunately.
