fixing a dell lattitude cpx notebook . Its hard to turn on, usulay takes three goes to get it to start. Very slow to post and once past wont boot to xp normally or in safe mode. Checked the harddrive , put it into a tower and its boots up fine there. Replaced the powerboard but still has problems startting up, slow and not booting fully. I guess its the motherboard but wondering if I have missed something else?
tried it with battery/without, without cd drive. Always freezes in safe mode and normal mode. tried it with xp install disk. freezes after loading all the drivers. tried a bartPE disk again freezes and does the same with a linux standalone disk. Only things I can get to run are a couple of emergency boot disks with partion magic, spinrite and memory tests.. these all run fine just not full blown OS
Check your memory. Remove the sticks then add only 1 stick at a time.
Which BIOS version do you have? You might go to www.dell.com and get the latest BIOS update.
I believe the CPx has a diag utility built in.
Hit Ctrl-D to go into it.. I think.. If this doesnt work, let me know. I have a couple of CPx's myself and would have to get them out and try it myself to get the right sequence.
hmm this is a cpx_H dell site only shows bios upto a14 which is what i have. will try the new key combo.. using hirens boot cd to run a few tests. so far all the hardware is showing up okay.
can get into bios but it does nt report any temps or voltages. . been running hardware tests all morning and it runs fine (everything is loaded to a ramdisk) , just cannot get any xp disks to run. I'll take the drive out and put it back in the tower see if updating xp helps .
ran defrag and chksidk last time it was in the tower.. badly fragmented but diskeeper sorted it out.
yes usualy takes three goes (it will start then shut down, 3rd try completes post) to get it to start. that why originally i thought it was the powerboard, replaced that still no luck. So do have a new motherbaord on the way but wanted to check if I had missed something.
Off topic but... That's not always true. The HSF in my acer is full copper and finned like crazy. It dissipates heat from the A64 heart beautifully and NEVER causes it to overheat.
As for the Dell, it may be a failing HDD controller. A completely bad one would prevent booting completely but a failing one may partially work. Also, the CPU may have just tuckered out. if the HSF wasn't doing it's job then that could have greatly contributed to it.
Thanks for all the help. replaced the motherboard and is now running perfectly
Ric
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