Hello all,

My girlfriend has a Dell Inspiron 9100 notebook that is acting pretty crazy; it reboots and shuts down randomly and sometimes refuses to start back up again for awhile. At first I thought it was a Windows XP problem, because it started out just freezing or rebooting within Windows or when Windows was being loaded, but now it does it all of the time. A couple of times it has mentioned something about a "flash write protection error" after one of these episodes, so I'm wondering if she just has some sort of malicious code on her
computer that started with Windows and is trying to spread, or if the problem is hardware related. Can anyone shed some light on this? I'm stumped. Thanks.

Dell has a diagnostic utility as well as other ideas in these links:

http://support.dell.com/support/trou...ng.aspx?~ck=mn

http://support.dell.com/support/down...os=WW1&osl=EN#


Also: look in your Event viewer: rt. click My Computer then click Manage then Event Viewer.
Or: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or Start/Run/ eventvwr
Open the system as well as the application tabs & look for X errors. Click error line for details.
Post back the source & event id especially of errors that seem to coincide with a crash.

Also:

Go to start | search (type in) .dmp
Note the location of your latest .dmp file.

Then:

1) Download and install the
Debugging Tools from Microsoft
2) Download and install this
debugwiz
3) Open the Wiz & Browse to, or paste in the path to, your latest .dmp file.
4) After the Wiz creates a Text document attach it back to this thread.

Well unfortunately, the computer can't boot into Windows longer than a minute without it freezing or shutting off, even in safe mode, so I can't do the last things you suggested that involve getting into Windows, but I'll download the Dell utilities and update you with what they say.

Sounds like it could be a RAM problem. Did the laptop come with a Dell Diagnostics CD? It's a blue one I think. Those CDs are bootable so you can actually start up the laptop from the CD and run the diagnostics without having to go into Windows. If it still only runs for a minute or two doing it that way, then you've ruled out any kind of software problem and, if it's still under warranty, you can get on the phone to Dell for them to replace whatever has packed up

Alright, the computer won't even start up anymore; the charging indicator doesn't come on when the computer plugs in, and when I press the power button, the lights come on, but only for a couple of seconds. I tried taking the battery out and plugging it in that way, but it doesn't help. I also tried taking the RAM out, and it didn't help either. Any other suggestions?

Originally Posted by Airuis

Alright, the computer won't even start up anymore; the charging indicator doesn't come on when the computer plugs in, and when I press the power button, the lights come on, but only for a couple of seconds. I tried taking the battery out and plugging it in that way, but it doesn't help. I also tried taking the RAM out, and it didn't help either. Any other suggestions?

Oh lovely. I'm about a year late, but I have the exact same problem.
It's something related to the motherboard and the ports on the back.

I can get my computer to boot past just the "lock" indicator lights by (no joke) firmly pressing down on the AC adapter cable. The computer then boots and works fine, but if I attempt to plug in a USB device, or even shake the computer in any way (typing intently, for example) it will make a horrifying "CRACK" sound, the screen will go black and the fans will slowly turn off. The lights, however remain on.

I can get it to boot again my repeating the pressing of the power cable.
I'm confused as hell, and I'm out of warranty so I guess I've got a desktop computer that needs it's USB devices plugged in prior to boot.