ghost in the machine

E

ender1

Greetings and Salutations!
Hopefully someone has had first hand experience with this and can
readily help me diagnose the culprit. I have a Dell 8000 Inspiron
laptop (gulp… it was great back in the day). Now when I go to start
it up- it, for lack of a better word...chunks (very choppy and slow).
This is occurring right at start up, and even when going in to
manipulate the BIOS. I have let it sit for 40+ minutes and it doesn't
ever go into the OS. The status bar will sporadically advance at first
then just run really slow. That is why I am thinking it is not a XP
Pro software problem. My initial thoughts are CPU, RAM, HDD, or even
worse the MB herself. Just an additional note when the power cord is
plugged in the LED doesn't like to blink more than once to let me
know that she is charging but there is still power being fed.
I would appreciate any and all insight into this predicament.
 
J

JAD

sounds like the CPU is throttling back because of heat issue. or your power
supply may be going. check the wall wart's output.
 
R

rhys

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 23:36:23 +0000,
Greetings and Salutations!
Hopefully someone has had first hand experience with this and can
readily help me diagnose the culprit. I have a Dell 8000 Inspiron
laptop (gulp… it was great back in the day). Now when I go to start
it up- it, for lack of a better word...chunks (very choppy and slow).
This is occurring right at start up, and even when going in to
manipulate the BIOS. I have let it sit for 40+ minutes and it doesn't
ever go into the OS. The status bar will sporadically advance at first
then just run really slow. That is why I am thinking it is not a XP
Pro software problem. My initial thoughts are CPU, RAM, HDD, or even
worse the MB herself. Just an additional note when the power cord is
plugged in the LED doesn't like to blink more than once to let me
know that she is charging but there is still power being fed.
I would appreciate any and all insight into this predicament.

I have an Inspiron 8200 and they are nice honking laptops when tricked
out.

I had this problem and it turned out to be a drained second battery.
Check it by running purely on AC (remove the batteries, leaving empty
bays) and then if you can boot normally, move the drained battery to
the second bay and see if it will charge.

A Dell Technician walked me through it in about four minutes. I used
to do tech support, so we avoided the newbie quiz, but even so, I
saved about three hours of nervous troubleshooting (it's a business
laptop) by making the call.

Good luck.

R.
 
E

ender1

Wow! It was so simple I feel like quite the idiot. I removed both
batteries like you prescribed and plugged it into the walwort. Viola
she had life. Then another curiosity occurred I popped back in the
batteries and they took a charge. I have worked in an IT/IS
department and felt quite ashamed to say the least that this would be
the issue. Who knew that really dead batteries would throttle the CPU
and cause mayhem with the system...even if the laptop is plugged into
the wall.
Thank you gentlemen for coming to my aid, in my time of need. May
Karma do its thing.
 

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