I bought an inexpensive computer for my sister last year for Christmas. It’s a Dell Optiplex GXM 5120. I believe it’s a 166 with 32 meg RAM and a 1 gig drive.
It worked fine at my house, but when I brought it to hers, it had trouble starting up. You can hear things trying to start, the drive spins, and the memory check runs. Then, nothing. Just stuck there. The drive sounds like it’s running down, then silence.
The last thing it shows before stopping is the RAM check. My sister says that if you try over and over (many, many times) eventually it will boot and run perfectly.
Any guesses? I was thinking drive, but would it boot partially without finishing? Would it run perfectly upon the eventual successful boot?
I also thought power supply. Is it possible for them to go gradually or do they just bite it?
I have it at my house now, and it’s the same thing that was happening to her. (I was suspecting her old outlets at home)
Any help would be appreciated- she can’t afford a new one, but I could replace parts, if needed, or try different options.
When you say “worked fine, moved it, now it fails”, the problem is often a connector jarred loose in the move. I’ve never had a loose connector cause the symptoms you describe, but it could be a loose IDE cable or power cable on the drive or some other peripheral that confusing the BIOS. You might try popping the case and making sure every connector is snuggly seated.
You might also try booting from a floppy. If that works, you’ve at least localized the problem to the HD.
It could be the power supply. Normally, they don’t just bite it. They gradually die. All the wiring is subject to a lot of wear and tear. Not only the wiring, but the components inside the power supply (resistors, capacitors, diodes, etc.).
A lot of times, a new PS will solve the problem.
But, before you do that, this same problem happened to me just a couple of months ago. One day, everything is just hunky dore, then the next, the drives sound like they’re on their last leg, struggling to work. On some days they boot, on others, they don’t.
I was about to replace the PS, but then I thought about the “keep it simple” philosophy. Instead of swapping the PS, I swapped hard drive cables. And sure enough, that did the trick. The drives don’t make any funny noises, and they boot up like they always did.
If you have an extra cable lying around, or know anyone that does, definitely make use of it.
Having done tech support for several years, I will second micco’s prognosis of a loose connection. Try actually reseating (pull the cable out and push it back in) each drive cable connection, both on the motherboard and at the drive. That will almost certainly fix the problem, especially since it POSTs.
I really doubt that it’s the power supply in this case, if only because it powers on each time, but I’ve seen stranger things happen.
