I wonder if anybody has any thoughts on this... I have a Dell Inspiron 9100. It has served me very well but now has died. I was living in the hot humidity of Africa, and just up until I returned to the UK, it was working fine. The first problems were that it was either completely freezing at any time, or there were what I can best describe as a flickering screen, or maybe glitchy...whatever, everything had frozen again including the mouse pointer. Although i think it is quite unlikely, these problems seemed to have started whn I unistalled norton systemworks. On only a couple of occasions, a blue screen would appear saying that there was a problem with my ati radeon drivers. I ran a whole series of defragmenting, scan disking and diagnostic tests to see if I could find what had gone wrong. The only thing that came up was was that 'the volume is dirty' appeared on scan disk. After looking on other forums, this pointed to the fact that the hard drive's days were numbered. The crashes were completely at random. Sometimes it would run fine for a few hours, sometimes it would crash during the windows loading screens, and sometimes it wouldnt even get to the BIOS startup screen. Now it wont even get that far. I turn on the computer and the fans and disk drive wizz, there is the quickest flicker of white as the on button is pressed which is pretty normal, but then nothing. Ive tried using recovery disks, boot disks and held down the 'mute' button when the computer is turned on, which is supposed to run some tests then give me some beeps which are the results. Nothing! I bought a brand new hard drive which is easily fitted on a dell, but still nothing. Does anyone have any ideas what I could do to find out what the problem may be??? Could it be the BIOS? Is it possible to damage the bios??? If so, where could I find the files to reinstall it, and how to do it?!? I heard it existed on a separate chip to the hard drive, so should still be present on my computer. Im really at a loss. My warranty ran out a few months ago and it is not insured. Really...any help or advice would be appreciated. I dont want to go to a specialist repair place, after volunteering in Africa, I dont have the funds to do that... Sincere thanks... Martin
BiosCentral - Dell BIOS Post Codes I don't know the pattern, but you might want to cross-reference those beeps with the above link and see what you come up with.
Thanks for the help. I looked at the codes, but it doesnt run like that now. Istead it used the lights for caps lock and the battery to give flashing codes. Looking on dells troubleshooting pages, it eventually says to contact them for technical support. I think it may be the motherboard, I really dont know. I also replaced the memory modules which didnt make a difference. Think I will try to sell it for parts on ebay, save up for something new. Thanks again, Martin
It might not hurt to drop Dell an e-mail and ask what they might think it is and take it from there. It may not be that expensive, but if it's the motherboard, then yeah, it might be time to move onto something new. I don't know if you still have a warranty, but if it's still good, then don't forget about making use of that. You may also be able to drop it off at a computer shop and see what they think it is for a small fee.
