Recently Rebuilt PC

[H14rry]

Hi,

I am fairly experienced with PC's and have just rebuilt my first PC.

All went well, new hard drive, more RAM etc.

I installed XP Pro SP2 and then updated to SP3.

I have installed all the drivers from the DELL website (machine is an OPTIPLEX 740).

All appeared ok.

Now I am starting to experience problems. Every time I start the machine up, I get the usual DELL logo and the bios loads ok. After about 20 seconds i then just get a black screen with a blinking dash in the top left corner and that it, I get no further.

I have to manually turn the PC off and reboot, at which point, 9 times out of 10 windows loads sucessfully. Any ideas on why it does this??

Once in windows all is fine, but after about 20 minutes of usage, not with any particular program, its happened with iTunes, word, a few others, the computer just completely freezes. The mouse still moves about the screen but I cant close anything, open anything, run task manager, nothing??

I have to completely reboot and normally then get stuck with this blinking dash a few times before windows loads, I carry on with what I was doing, iTunes for example and then a little while later, 10 - 20 minutes, same again!?!?!

Can someone with a little more knowledge than me please shed some light?

I wondered whether it might be a problem with the PC trying to communicate with the hard drive intermitently??

[H14rry]

Not detecting CD drive sometimes

 

Hi,

I recently rebuilt my pc, new hard drive, ram and operating system.

other than that, all components remained the same, original machine is a DELL OPTIPLEX 740.

I installed XP and installed all drivers from the DELL website.

Now whenever I manage to sucessfully log on to the PC (which isnt always! See my other posts) my CD drive doesnt always appear in my computer and when I put a disk in I get nothing??

Any suggestions? I have definately installed the correct drivers.

thanks

[RandyL]

Hi. I have a feeling these two things might be related since the issues started at the same time so I merged your two threads into this one.

[Dalo Harkin]

So you have upgraded the RAM, was it matched to the same speed of the other RAM that was already in the system?

What else did you do to the PC, did you upgrade the BIOS ?

 

you say that you installed a new HDD, is the old one still in the same system?

did you change the boot order in the BIOS to the NEW HDD (this is one of the causes for the blinking cursor, as the system is trying to find the OS)

 

Hope this helps.

[H14rry]

the ram is definately ok, there was a gig in there, 2 x 512 sticks and i have replaced them with 2 x 1gb sticks but like for like in terms of everything else in terms of ram.

i have removed the old hard drive all together and again, replaced it for an exact, like for like, just more memory size.

i have updated the bios drivers but not changed it all together.

i tried having a bit more of a play again tonight to get it working but now it wont even boot up at all.

I just get the blinking cursor in the top left hand corner after the bios screen.

you say that the blinking cursor is an indication that its looking for the operating system, the operating system is loaded onto the new hard drive, as I say, i have removed the old one, and i have selected the hard drive as the primary boot device in the cmos settings.

cant think what else to do and its really frustrating as it all seemed to work ok at first and now nothing???

[Synapse]

On Dell's you can press F12 on boot to select the first boot device, try it and see if it boots ok.

[Dalo Harkin]

If it didnt boot then how did you get the OS installed on the new drive?

 

I think that the OS needs reloading...dont install any drivers for anything other than those you need like the SATA drivers (these are loaded at the blue XP set up screen just before the files are loaded, you need to press F6)

[H14rry]

i think i have managed to figure out the problem. i have just disconnected the sata cable from my cd/dvd drive and everythin appears to be working fine?

I'm going to see if I can reinstall the drivers for the cd/dvd drive and then double check that the hard drive is set as the primary boot device, sure it is though.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, if after being sure the correct drivers are installed for the CD/DVD drives, but the problem persists, only cured by disconnecting the CD/DVD drives, it may well be the drive or drives have a fault. I am assuming you have two drives, so disconnect one only at a time to find the faulty one.

Nev.

[RandyL]

To affirm what Nev is saying I have seen a faulty CD/DVD drive cause windows not to boot or to boot extremely slow even though the first boot device was the hard drive. It was my brothers. Once disconnected it worked great. However that drive was not a SATA.