Bios Issues

[dawnybirdg3]

I have a dell dimension 2400 and when I boot it goes through dell screen then it goes to a blinking cursor. I flashed the bios reinstalled windows and reset the battery. now I get MZ and a blinking cursor. Help from one geek to another.

[ronallandottk]

Strangely enough, the symptoms you describe can sometimes be solved by simply uninstalling a drive, whether it's in working order or not. Try booting again, but unplug all IDE, SATA, USB, and even memory cards if you have a built in card reader.

I've experienced this before with a home built PC, which would stop on startup until I unplugged the optical drive from the motherboard. I've had a UMPC that wouldn't boot if a USB flash drive was plugged in, or if a memory card that wasn't formatted in it was inserted in the card reader. It would boot though if the memory card was formatted by the UMPC itself...oddly enough.

Basically just try unplugging everything from the motherboard, including RAM (of course leave at least one stick when you try to boot) and any expansion cards (except the video card, for obvious reasons). You probably have an unidentified device stopping the bootup process for some reason.

Hope this helps you deal with your problem with your PC.

[dawnybirdg3]

Thank You for your advice. gave it a try still nothing new. Two quick beeps after the dell screen goes by. When I have a disk it will boot from disk to run diagnostics but nothing is coming up bad. Have yet to reach the windows screen. tried flashing the bios, reinstalling windows, fixboot, and all recovery console commands. really baffled.

[ronallandottk]

Try booting from the optical drive (use a Windows CD/DVD installer, or any bootable CD/DVD) instead of your hard disk. If this works, and you get to the setup screen, the Windows installation on your hard disk may be corrupted.

If the suggestion above doesn't work, you may have a hardware problem as indicated by the two quick beeps. If I'm not mistaken there should only be one beep on normal startup, any change in the number, frequency, or duration of beeps means the BIOS is detecting a problem.

If you haven't done so already try unplugging everything from the motherboard and uninstalling all PCI/AGP/PCI-E etc. cards except the video card and at least a stick of RAM (both should be good though, when in doubt use a video card and RAM you're sure to be defect free).

Check your motherboard's power connections, the main and aux power cables should be securely plugged.

Power on the motherboard.

If there are still abnormal beeps by this point, or your motherboard doesn't POST or you can't enter the BIOS setup, your motherboard may be hosed (considering that everything else is unplugged, by process of elimination, your motherboard is the culprit.)

Scan the motherboard if there are any loose screws or metal bits on it, you may have short and not know it. Check the mounting points, while unlikely, some points may be contacting your PC's metal frame or case.

Take a whiff. If you smell burnt plastic, that's not a good sign. Scan the motherboard for scorch marks. That's not a bad sign as well, but you know that already.

Try clearing the BIOS settings (check your motherboard manual to see which pins need shorting with a jumper).

You can also try replacing your battery.

I'm sorry, that's all I can think of for now. Normally one of these suggestions should work, since there are only so many reasons why a PC won't boot. If all possible solutions fail, there might be a chance your motherboard has already gone bad, in which case, you have to send it to the manufacturer for service.

Let us know how it goes.

[dawnybirdg3]

Pretty sure the motherboard is no longer with us. Thank you for your help.