Dell Dimension 8200 giving me problems 2

[goombawaho]

I'm working on a Dell Dimension 8200 for a friend. I loaded Windows XP and was updating all the drivers. Everything was fine and then suddenly after a reboot, I got the following symptom - A restart of XP that looked normal until it either A)Went to black screen and nothing else happened OR B) Booted to desktop and neither mouse or keyboard would work. Booting to safe mode always works just fine with mouse and keyboard functionality.

So, I ran full EXTENDED Dell Diagnostics on it and found absolutely nothing wrong. So, I formatted/reloaded Windows and everything is good. I updated drivers one by one and when I updated the sound card driver the problem returned. So, I did a system restore and everything was okay, so I thought I had figured out the problem.

BUT it started happening again this morning after a week of functioning properly. I really don't have any clue what it could be. Any ideas???

 

[BadBigBen]

Run a MEMTEST (eg. Memtest86+)...

also check for excessive dust build up...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[goombawaho]

Memory test was part of the Dell diagnostics, but I also ran a separate one from my ultimate boot cd - no problems found.

Regarding dust - The PC is cleaner than my kitchen. That's the first thing I did when I got it - blew it out and vacuumed it out.

Come on, I need a brainstorm here.

 

[BadBigBen]

Well, you did not mention that you cleaned it out nor that you ran a memtest...

so far it boils down to this: that it may be driver related...

reasoning:

Booting to safe mode always works just fine with mouse and keyboard functionality.

other possibility could be that the system is underpowered, when all hardware gets fully initialized... please list the complete system specs...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, I never mention cleaning the PC because that's just something I always do before I bring someone's PC into my house. Most PCs are pretty dusty.

Here are the specs on the Dell web site. It's nothing exotic!

http://support.dell.com/support/top.../details?~ck=ln&~tab=2&c=us&l=en&lnki=0&s=gen

But basically, it's a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 and it has a modem, a sound card, a network card in the PCI slots and an AGP video card.

Here's two pictures of the Device Manager. Save to your desktop and take a look.

http://home.comcast.net/~deadmilkmen/DevMan1.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~deadmilkmen/DevMan2.JPG

 

[Freestone]

Perhaps the sound card itself is defective? While you are at it, check the motherboard capacitors since that issue is starting to appear on older Dell's, mostly the Optiplex model.

 

[goombawaho]

Good idea since I'm out of them - I'll pull out the unnecessary cards (sound, LAN, modem) and see if it makes any difference. I've never seen any of those bad caps, so I'll look for a picture on the internet to see what I should be looking for.

 

[BadBigBen]

Capacitor Plaque

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Freestone]

I usually include a link to bad capacitor information but I am glad I didn't this time as Ben's link is better than most I've seen. Thanks, B-cubed.

 

[goombawaho]

Ok, I pulled out all cards and booted the machine like 10 times. No problems. Then I put 1 card back in at a time and rebooted a bunch of times after putting each one in. It seems that when I put the network card back in (Realtek 8139), the machine started misbehaving again. So, I pulled it out and continued putting the other cards back - rebooting a bunch of times.

I think it was the network card, but I don't see how it passed the Dell diagnostic tests. The last thing I did was to add a different network card in a different PCI slot (superstition) and I'm going to continue some more rebooting today. Computers are very annoying little things at times.