Originally Posted by inspiron 3700

I have a Dell Inspiron 3700 that was given to me recently (P3 450). It came with win98.

I wanted to install win xp but got an error message about the computer wasn't ACPI compatable. It had a very old BIOS so I thought that if I upgraded the BIOS it might help.

Before I upgraded the BIOS it didn't restart properly, it always got stuck in the 'windows 98 is shutting down' screen.

I started to upgrade the BIOS but then got a message about updating RUN_ME.REG. I read somewhere that whether using Windows 98 version 4.10.1998 or not it was good to update it.

I updated RUN_ME.REG, the BIOS to A17.

When I turn on the computer now most of the time I just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor, no Bios. Sometimes I'm lucky and get the bios and then I can get the computer to boot.

It did seem that if I took out the battery and left it for a few days then pressed the on button for 5 seconds before putting the battery in it would boot once only ie. something is stopping the bios from coming up unless I totally drain all of the power from the computer, when I start it it only works once because the power is back.

Now it rarely boots, sometimes it takes a few tries to get it to boot after draining the power.

I've tried booting it without the the CMOS (reserve) battery and it makes no difference.


What could be stopping the BIOS from loading? If I can get the BIOS back then I find an operating system that will work or run diagnostics etc but I need the BIOS.

Do you have any ideas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've been trying to sort this out for over a month.

Thanks

http://support.dell.com/support/down...4011&vercnt=13

The Dell website is where I got the upgraded BIOS from.

The problem is that something is stopping the BIOS from loading most of the time. I suspect that there's something wrong with the motherboard. On the occations when the BIOS does load then there's no problem with the computer.

What do you think?

Thanks

There is not enough RAM on that machine to run XP. Also the hard drive would be barely large enough to run well.

# Dell Inspiron 3700
# Tahoe Blue Bezel
# Pentium III 450mhz
# 64Mb DIMM of 100mhz SDRAM
# 6 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive, 9.5 MM
# 1.44MB 3.5" Internal / External modular floppy drive
# 24X CD-ROM, Internal / External modular CD-ROM drive
# Lithium Ion Battery (Lasts about 3-4 hours)
# 3D Positional Sound and Wavetable
# NetGear FA510TX PCMCIA (CardBus) 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
# ATI 2X AGP 8MB RAGE Mobility M1 3D Video
# 14.1" XGA Active Matrix Display
# Logitech Midnight Gray, PS2 2-button Mouse
# Microsoft Windows 98 SE AND Slackware Linux 7.0 W/ KDE

That said there were issues with that model's RAM. You could try new RAM.

Do you have any disks that came with it? I would try an older BIOS version but Dell does not list the older versions.

I am a little confused as to what you are seeing at start-up. You mention just a black screen with the flashing cursor. In other words a DOS prompt.

You see nothing before this? No Compaq Logo etc? Do these setup entries work?
Enter System Setup by pressing <Fn><F1> or <F2> when the F2 message appears during the System Power On startup process.

Can you boot any floppies?


http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pcyp/

I will get more RAM and maybe a bigger hard drive once I get the computer working. They are advertised on ebay with win xp. I know it will be very slow, I just can't deal with win98.

I've tried going back to the previous BIOS but the newer BIOS still comes up when it works.

When I turn it on there's just a blank screen with a flashing cursor, not a dos prompt. You can't type anything. When there's a cd in, the drive starts doing somthing for a few seconds then stops, and the floppy does the same.

I don't get a beep, a logo or anything.

It looks like it wants to load the bios then stops. There are no other problems with it, the other day it loaded the bios then booted from the cd drive as I specified and I installed win xp but when you have to restart it then didn't load the bios. I'm sure that the next time I can get the bios up xp will load. Previously it would do the same and then occationally start with win98 before I changed the os.

The fact that somtimes it works means that the CPU, hard drive, memory, video memory must be ok. The problem is getting the bios to load, once that happens then it's a normal computer.